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2104.01609.Pdf J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000) 000: #### DOI AstroSat Science Support Cell Roy, J.1,*, Alam, Md S.1, Balamurugan, C.2, Bhattacharya, D.1, Bhoye, P.1, Dewangan, G. C.1, Hulsurkar, M.1, Mali, N.1, Misra, R.1, Pore, A.1 1Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Ganeshkhind, Pune, 411 007, India 2ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network, ( ISTRAC / ISRO ) , Bengaluru, 560058, India *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] MS received 1 January 2015; accepted 1 January 2015 Abstract. AstroSat is India’s first dedicated multi-wavelength space observatory launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on 28 September 2015. After launch, the AstroSat Science Support Cell (ASSC) was set up as a joint venture of ISRO and the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) with the primary purpose of facilitating the use of AstroSat, both for making observing proposals and for utilising archival data. The ASSC organises meetings, workshops and webinars to train users in these activities, runs a help desk to address user queries, provides utility tools and disseminates analysis software through a consolidated web portal. It also maintains the AstroSat Proposal Processing System (APPS) which is deployed at ISSDC, a software platform central to the workflow management of AstroSat operations. This paper illustrates the various aspects of ASSC functionality. Keywords. AstroSat—ASSC. 1. Introduction violent explosions like Gamma-ray bursts and high en- ergy emission from systems harbouring black holes, AstroSat is the first Indian multi-wavelength astronomy neutron stars, white dwarf. For the last five years, As- observatory, operational for the last five years. It was troSat has been producing unprecedented high-quality launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation data from cosmic sources. It is a proposal-driven, ob- (ISRO) on 28 September 2015 at 10:00 AM and placed servatory class mission, with a large fraction of the ob- at an altitude of 650 km above the Earth into a circu- serving time open to national users. AstroSat has al- lar orbit at an inclination of 6◦ and an orbital period ready observed ∼ 1200 distinct targets in ∼ 2100 point- of 98 min. AstroSat operates in specific bands over ings. Moreover, 239 observations of Target of Opportu- the energy range from ∼ 1eV to 100 keV by means of nity (TOO) have been carried out. These observations 4 co-aligned instruments, one UV imaging telescope are providing a unique opportunity to a large number of and three co-aligned X-ray astronomy instruments. scientists from all over the country to carry out front- The Ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) telescope line research using a state of the art indigenous national (Tandon et al., 2020; Subramaniam et al., 2016) is ca- facility. AstroSat has huge potential to attract young pable of simultaneous observations in the optical, near students and researchers in Indian Universities and in- arXiv:2104.01609v1 [astro-ph.IM] 4 Apr 2021 and far UV bands. A Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT) stitutions and engage them in high-quality astronomical (Singh et al., 2017, 2016) observes in the 0.3-8 keV research. Moreover, young teachers in Universities and band. The hard X-ray instruments Large Area X- Colleges would also be interested in using AstroSat ob- ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC) (Antia et al., 2017; servations. However, since this is the first time such an Agrawal et al., 2017) and Cadmium Zinc Telluride Im- observatory is available in India, the young scientists ager (CZTI) (Rao et al., 2017; Chattopadhyayet al., would necessarily require initiation, training and men- 2016; Vadawale et al., 2015) are sensitive in the 3-80 toring, if they have to accurately utilize the AstroSat keV and 10-150 keV bands respectively. There is opportunity. There are already ∼ 1369 users AstroSat also a Scanning Sky Monitor (SSM) (Ramadevi et al., from 42 different countries. There is a critical need to 2017a,b) to monitor variability of cosmic X-ray sources address the queries from these users and to facilitate in 2.5-10 keV. With five specialized instruments on- optimal usage of AstroSat data. board, AstroSat’s mission is to observe a wide variety To address these requirements, the Indian Space of astronomical sources such as star-forming regions, Research Organization (ISRO) and IUCAA have estab- © Indian Academy of Sciences 1 #### Page 2 of 1 J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000) 000: #### lished the AstroSat Science Support Cell (ASSC)1. The online tools to help users propose for AstroSat ob- cell which is hosted at IUCAA started its operations in servations (explained in details in the next subsection May 2016. With most of the AstroSat data made avail- on Software and other resources for proposal writing). able publicly and more such releases expected in the The proposers page provides the pieces of information near future, the role of ASSC is critical in providing the on the upcoming, ongoing and past announcements of science support. We describe the main objectives and opportunities cycles, scientific and technical proposal functionalities of ASSC in assisting Indian and Inter- templates, online tools such as exposure time and visi- national community to participate in observations and bility calculators, simulation and necessary documents using data from AstroSat. such as the proposers’ guide. For data processing and analysis, the latest available pipelines for all four instru- ments are maintained including sample data which al- 2. Functionalities of ASSC lows the user to actually try out the analysis (explained in details in the next subsection of Software and other 2.1 Overview of the web-portal resources for data analysis). The results of the analysis ASSC webpage serves as a web repository of all the of the sample data are made available allowing the new software, latest updates, proposal cycles, publications user to evaluate whether his/her analyses match with and link to various webpages relevant for proposing the standard ones or not. Additional important software with AstroSat and data analysis. ASSC has a central- such as the AstroSat orbit file generator, the Barycentric ized web portal which provides AstroSat users with correction code and the AstroSat Time converter devel- links to tools developed at ISRO, Payload Operation oped in-house at the ASSC are made available through Centres (POC) as well as documents/tools useful for the portal. ASSC has also developed advanced scien- scientific analysis. The Document section in Proposers tific tools such as to compute frequency and energy- page allows user to access the Proposers Guide which dependent time lag from LAXPC data. The ”Recent explains the details of the AstroSat proposal preparation Updates” panel in the right side of the page informs and submission procedure using the APPS software, it all the users about the recent updates and announce- also acts as the proposers’ manual for the APPS soft- ments relevant to AstroSat for example recent software ware. There is a Red Book available in the Document updates, proposal cycle deadlines, health of any instru- section which gives the details of all the accepted AO ment, etc. The home page of the webpage displays all and GT proposals along with the abstract. The Red- the publications based on AstroSat data from all the book helps to check if there is already an observation instruments. Home page also announces the AO cy- proposed or completed for the source of interest that cle opening from time to time as advertised by ISRO. the proposer wants to propose. The home page of the ASSC webpage also displays the picture of the month web portal provides the AstroSat schedule viewer link2 based on AstroSat results which is regularly updated. to check the status of a proposed observation or the planned scheduling of the observations. Further, As- 2.2 Software, webTools and resources troSat handbook is provided to the users explaining the 2.2.1 Software and resources for proposal preparation technical details about the design and characteristics of ASSC provides the software, online/offline tools, doc- each of the payloads on-board the satellite, instrument uments, etc., necessary for the proposal writing. It is calibration, selection of filters, different modes of op- a single platform which contains proposal preparation erations, the primary scientific objectives intended with materials for all the instruments UVIT, SXT, LAXPC, these payloads. The relative angle between the payload and CZTI onboard AstroSat. Using these materials, boresight’s3 (UVIT, SXT, LAXPC) before and after users can simulate energy spectrum, power spectrum, alignment corrections is also available which enables image, etc. They can find the optimum value of ex- the proposer to account for the offset of secondary in- posure time to achieve a scientific goal with AstroSat struments for the proposed observation with the choice observations. As the satellite time is very precious, it of primary instrument. After a successful observation is a crucial step in proposal writing and acceptance of of a proposed target the procedure of the data process- the proposal. These proposal preparation tools are de- ing, data rights, proprietary period, etc. are provided scribed below in more details. in the document ”AstroSat data usage guidelines”. The ASSC web portal maintains up to date information and • AstroSat Visibility: ASSC provides AstroSat visi- bility calculators i.e ASTROVIEWER developed by 1http://AstroSat-ssc.iucaa.in/ 2https://webapps.issdc.gov.in/MCAP/ 3http://AstroSat-ssc.iucaa.in/?q=documents J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000)000: #### Page 3 of 1 #### ISRO4 and AVIS5 developed by ASSC, which tell ticular signal to noise ratio. If a user provides the the user whether a target of interest will be visible exposure time as input then, in that case, it will to AstroSat for observations during specific peri- give the signal to noise ratio in the output.
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