TO: All GCN Notice recipients RE: SUZAKU-WAM Lightcurve Notice available DT: 07 Nov 2013 INTRODUCTION: The GCN system has been modified to incorporate the distribution of lightcurves of GRBs, other transients, and non-astrophysically-caused triggers detected by the SUZAKU-WAM instrument. SUMMARY: SUZAKU-WAM will trigger about 11 times per month, of which ~60% are astrophysical (eg GRBs, SGRs) and ~5% are solar flares, the rest are noise. These detections are discovered during automated processing of the downlinked data. They are sent to GCN and automatically distributed to those "sites" that have the SUZAKU_LC notice type enabled and that meet their filtering specifications. The typical time delays range from ~5 to ~48 hours. These notices contain only the trigger date/time and the countrate lightcurve; there is no positional information available for this type. MOTIVATION: These Suzaku-WAM lightcurve notices can be used: 1) with just the trigger_time for temporal correlations with other mission-instrument trigger times (thus allowing the analysis threshold to be lowered for each), and 2) with the actual lightcurve for more detailed (ie shape) correlations. [Adding SUZAKU_LC is part of a larger, on-going effort within GCN to facilitate above- and below-threshold correlations between same-/multi-messenger instruments.] OCCURRENCE RATE and CONFIDENCE LEVEL: There will be about 11 Suzaku-WAM triggers per month (109 in the first 10 months of 2013). Given the telemetry and data (re)processing methods used bt the Suzaku Team, ~50% will have duplicate notifications. About one third of the triggers will have temporal coincidences with INTEGRAL-SPIACS and KONUS-Wind, and therefore have a very high confidence of being astrophysical. TIME DELAY: The Suzaku automated ground software finds the transients and sends the message to GCN. The typical time delays range from ~5 to ~48 hours. CONTENT: SUZAKU_LC Notice contains lightcurve (ie countrate) increases from the WAM shields that exceed a threshold value (over some time interval). The energy range of the lightcurves is approximately 50-240 keV (dependant on detector gain; this energy range has been reduced from the full 50-5000 keV WAM range for use in correlations with other instruments in the IPN effort). These countrate increases can be caused by GRBs, other x-ray/hard_x-ray transients, and noise. The Notices contain the date, time, and trigger criteria (timescale and energy_band). There are two sub-types: (a) those resulting from an on-board trigger of countrate increase (BST events), and (b) those resulting from ground-processing scanning looking for rate increases (TRN events). For the BST triggers, the time resolution is 1/64 sec and the coverage is 64 sec (8 sec before and 56 sec after the trigger), and for the TRN events the sampling is 1 sec and 300 sec coverage (100s sec before and 200 sec after the detection). Currently, only the BST subtype is distributed -- the TRN may be distributed at a later date. DATA QUALITY: These lightcurves are the result of rapid automated processing and do not have the full calibration applied to them. They are being provided in this quicklook form with minimal delay to allow for rapid use and response by the community. Ultimately, any analysis that uses this WAM data that results in a publication should use the well-calibrated data from the official Suzaku processing pipeline. Please contact the Suzaku-WAM team for such data products. POSITIONS and ERROR BOX: This notice type does NOT contain any position information (unlike most of the GCN Notice types). FORMATS: This notice type is available in all the standard GCN formats: all 6 email-based formats, the 2 socket-based formats (binary and VOEvent XML). The lightcurves come as attachments (to the full email format only) in the GIF, JPEG, PS, PDF, and Text formats. The binary socket packet contents and format are similar to the other mission-specific packet types and are described in detail in the Socket Packet Definition Document: http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn/sock_pkt_def_doc.html . The base for the given UL is "http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn/notices_suz/" . e.g.: "http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn/notices_suz/suzaku_lc_130111_06871.gif". The extension (".gif") can also be replaced with ".txt", ".jpeg", ".ps", & ".pdf". FILTERING: All the normal GCN filtering functions are applicable, but given the special temporal-only nature of this notice type, the only functions that are valid are: type, time_delay, time-of-day window. MORE INFORMATION: Can be found at: http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn/suzaku.html NOTICE EXAMPLE: Here is an example of a full-format email SUAZAKU_LC Notice: TITLE: GCN/SUZAKU_LIGHTCURVE NOTICE NOTICE_DATE: Sat 12 Jan 13 18:46:11 UT TRIGGER_NUM: 1630306871 TRIGGER_DATE: 16303 TJD; 11 DOY; 13/01/11 TRIGGER_TIME: 6871.05 SOD {01:54:31.05} UT TRIGGER_FLAGS: 0x201 LC_URL: suzaku_lc_130111_06871.gif COMMENTS: SUZAKU WAM Lightcurve. COMMENTS: This event came from an on-board trigger. TEST NOTICES: There is no "test" type for the SUZAKU_LC Notice type. RECOGNITION: Sites are encouraged to acknowledge SUZAKU and GCN in their publications based on any observations or analyses using these GCN/SUZAKU_LC timestamps or lightcurves. MISC: These SUZAKU_LC notices are also distributed as part of the IPN_RAW notice type. But in that stream, the actual lightcurves themselves are not available in the "push" mechanism, only the "pull" mechanism from the IPN_RAW archive page. ARCHIVING: All the GCN/SUZAKU_LC Notices are archived within the GCN website at http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/suzaku_triggers.html . ACTION ITEM: If, after reviewing the information above/below, you want to receive these SUZAKU_LC notices, please send me a request to have them enabled. You can do this by forwarding this email (which has your important sitename identifier) to scott@milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov . Or you can go to http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn/config_builder.html and select "#2 Modify an existing config". Your current configuration is appended below. (You can also take this opportunity to make other changes to your configuration.) REMINDER OF RECENT ADDITIONS TO GCN: In case you have missed them, here is a brief list of the most recent additions to the GCN system. You might consider signing up for these Notice types as well. The full announcements/descriptions for each of these can be found at: http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn/whats_new.html IPN_RAW resumes (Aug 2012) // IPN Team resumes producing the IPN_RAW notices SWIFT_BAT_SUB_SUB_THRESHOLD (May 2012) // Swift-BAT Triggers with very low significance; use for temporal coincidences VOEvent Direct Server (Mar 2012) // Added 3 VOEvent servers to allow for direct distribution of VOEvents FERMI_LAT_MON/_TRANS (Aug 2011) // Flare-ups from known sources monitored by Fermi-LAT & non-GRB transients FERMI_LAT_GND (Aug 2011) // Automated ground processing to get GRB positions MOA (Aug 2011) // Locations of up-coming gravitational lensing events DOW_TOD (Jun 2011) // Preprogrammed notices at specific days-of-week & time-of-day FERMI_GBM FIN_POS (Jun 2011) // Human-in-the-loop ground-based analysis MAXI_UNKNOWN/_KNOWN (Apr 2011) // Unknown transients & Flare-ups from Known sources INTEGRAL_WEAK (Feb 2011) // Subthreshold detections by INTEGRAL SWIFT_BAT_MONITOR (Feb 2010) // Flare-ups from known sources monitored by Swift-BAT Sincerely, Scott Scott Barthelmy NASA-GSFC, Code 661, Greenbelt, MD 20771 PHONE: 301-286-3106 (office) CELL: 301-346-3733 EMAIL: scott@lheamail.gsfc.nasa.gov PAGER: 3013463733@cingularme.com WEB: http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn