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This page discusses new changes available in NICERDAS version 11a,distributed in HEASoft 6.32.1. This release is an intermediateNICER software and calibration release, with signifigant improvements. Users will find many of the changes beneficial, especially fordata taken after May 2023. Please note that HEASoft 6.32 / NICERDAS contains a bug that resultsin incorrect normalization and screening of data. Please upgrade allinstallations to HEASoft 6.32.1, which was released on August 23, 2023.

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Last update: 2023-08-23IntroductionObtaining useful scientific results from NICER observations is acombination of NICER observational data with software and calibrationproducts. Over time, NICER is committed to improving software andcalibration so that scientists can get the most out of their data.This page discusses changes available in NICERDAS 11a, released withHEASoft 6.32.1 in August 23, 2023. A previous release of July 2023,HEASoft 6.32 / NICERDAS 11, contains a bug.HEASoft 6.32.1 is an intermediate NICER software feature release.While no major calibration or workflow changes are provided, there aresignificant accomodations for data taken after May 2023, when NICERdeveloped an optical light leak. There are other beneficialimprovements that are worth checking out, as detailed in this article.

Any users of HEASoft 6.32 should upgrade to HEASoft 6.32.1 immediatelydue to a bug in the previous version which results incorrectnormalization.As always, we recommend users to document which version of softwarethey are using, especially for publication. This will help futureanalysts repeat your results. For more information, see the Reporting NICER software and calibrationversions thread.HEASoft 6.32.1 Patch Release Fixes Incorrect NormalizationThe original HEASoft 6.32 release contains a bug which results inincorrect normalization in many cases. The bug occurs in the task'nifpmsel', and impacts data where per-MPU screening is requested bythe user or by automatic screening. The bug affects only HEASoft6.32, and not earlier or later released versions.More information about the bugcan be found on the MPUAutoscreening Bug page.The only remedy is to upgrade to HEASoft 6.32.1, which containsNICERDAS 11a. NICERDAS 11a / HEASoft 6.32.1 is available from theHEASoft download page. If youneed help installing your NICER analysis environment, please seethe NICER Setup page.Overview of NICER ImprovementsHEASoft 6.32 / 6.32.1 (NICERDAS 11 / 11a) is an intermediate NICERsoftware release. This section provides an overview of the changes.More detail is provided in subsequent sections.Standard "Level 3" light curve tools now correct for numberof selected / enabled detectors.The task nicerl3-lc has been improved torenormalize a light curve based on the number of selected detectors.This handles the case when users are examining a data set where thenumber of detectors may change from time to time. This allows lightcurves to more accurately reflect the flux variations of the X-raysource, rather than variations due to detector turn on-offs. See thenicerl3-lc page for more details.New screening for high optical loading (undershoot) conditions.The nicerl2 task and its subordinate tasks have been improved to dealwith conditions that may be seen under very high optical lightingconditions. The potential exists for such situations to occur at anytime during NICER's history, but optical light loading is much moreprevalent after May 2023, when an optical light leak developed. Thefilter file has been augmented with new columns (NICERV5) in order toaid this screening. More details can be found below inthe "Dealing with High OpticalLoading" subsection.New way to combine observation data with the niobsmerge task.Merging observation data has been a commonly-requested functionalitywhich is included in this release. The task niobsmerge combinesfilter files, event files (both UFA and CL files), as well as theorbit file if available. This allows user to more flexibly work withdata that spans many observation segments (many days). More detailon this new feature can be found on our CombiningMultiple Observations page.Avoiding "shredded" GTIs. NICER event data can ocassionally have many small GTIs, known as "GTIshredding." These are symptoms of either extreme count rates, orscreening on a noisy parameter. This release employs several newtechniques to alleviate the problems of shredded GTIs. For more informationon this, please see the Preventing Shredded GTIssubsection below.Calibration Updates?This release does not have a companioncalibration release. The NICER team continues to work on calibrationissues, especially related to the optical light leak that developed in May 2023, but they are not mature enough to distribute at thistime.Should I Reprocess My Data?Users will want to know, should they reprocess my data with this newrelease? The answer depends on the circumstances.Users new to NICER or starting a new project will likely benefit fromreprocessing their data with the newest release. In addition, usersworking with data taken after the May 2023 optical light leak, orworking with data with very high undershoot levels, will obtainsignificant benefits from reprocessing with this release.Users New to NICER. If you are just starting to use NICER data,the NICER team highly recommends that you begin your work with thenewest NICER software and calibration. This release creates much morestreamlined workflows for both spectral and light curve extraction, soit is probably not worth investing time learning older techniques.Starting a New Project. If you are starting a new project, theNICER team recommends that you update your software and calibration.Although the new energy scale released with this calibration updatewill provide marginal improvements in analysis, the new automaticscreening tools may be beneficial to users.Working with High Optical Light Loading. NICER experienced anoptical light leak on May 22, 2023, which significantly increased thechances of high optical light loading during orbit day, depending on sun angle. The potential for optical light loading has always existed since NICER launched, but the likelihood to extreme conditions has increased significantly after the light leak developed. This release has several capabilities that aid in the process of screening, interpreting and analyzing data taken those circumstances. It is highly recommended to reprocess data observed after May 22 or under high optical loading conditions.A separate, but related, question is, am I required to reprocess mydata to take advantage of these new features? The short answer isyes, you are required to reprocess your data with nicerl2 to usethe new screening capabilities This is mostly because certain newfilter file columns are required for the new features to workproperly.Potential Incompatibility GotchasGenerally the NICER team strives to maintain forward and backwardcompatibility. This improves the user experience with our softwareand also instills confidence in the results from our observatory.However, in this release, there are the potential for someminor incompatibilities.Filter File Changes. The filter file (MKF file) columns havechanged since the previous release. Some columns have been added orchanged (for more information, please seethe Filter Files thread). Although itis advised to reprocess all of your data when starting a new project,there may be some situations where you have to merge filter files fromacross versions. Use the task nimkfmerge or niobsmerge for thissituation. For details on how to use these tasks, please seethe Filter Filesor Combining Observations threads,respectively, for more information.Two columns in the filter file, MPU_LOWMEM_FIFO_DELTA andMPU_LOWMEM_SCI_DATA, have been upgraded to be 32-bit numbers insteadof 8-bit numbers. Under high optical loading conditions, an 8-bitnumber is not sufficient to store these counts.For observation data taken under high optical light loading conditions, especially after May 22, 2023, it is highly recommendedto reprocess your entire observation with the new release to gainan upgraded filter file.EVENT_FLAGS changes.The NICER team has discovered a new phenomenon which we call"noise ringers." These are events that occur within a short period of time after an undershoot event (within 110 usec).Under high optical loading conditions, events within that time arealmost always noise. NICER now uses an EVENT_FLAGS bit (bit 0x40)to indicate that an event is within that time window. Screening of these events is done automatically in this release.However, users who manually screen data with an explicit expression involving EVENT_FLAGS should be aware that an extrabit is used. In the rare case that you are using a manually-specified eventfiltering expression which includes EVENT_FLAGS, you should change touse a full 8-bit bit-matching expression, for example "EVENT_FLAGS ==bxxxxxx00". If you don't use a manual EVENT_FLAGS expression, thefull eight bit transition is handled automatically for you. Usersshould also investigate using the keep_* parameters ofnicerl2/nicermergeclean/nicerclean instead of using an EVENT_FLAGSexpression.New screening by default.Users should be aware that several screening options are enabled by default.

• max_lowmem=250 - screens out data larger than max_lowmem lost events per second in the entire array
• thresh_range=-3-3 - screens data to accept data with a low energy threshold in the nominal night time range (set to 32-38 for light leak orbit day; -3-38 for all night and day thresholds)
• mingti=5.0 - minimum GTI size of 5 seconds
• erodedilate=5.0 - remove shredded GTI pieces smaller than 5 seconds
• keep_noisering=NO - remove noise ringer events when undershoots > noisering_under ct/s/FPM
• niautoscreen - now has sensible absolute limits for all "bad" data indicators

Running NICER spectra and light curve tools with gtifile optiondoes not work with 3C50 background model.The nicerl3-spect and nicerl3-lc tools can accept a parameter calledgtifile, which allows the user to do detailed time filtering on on an existing screened event list. However, this parameter is not compatible with all background models, such as 3C50 (which does notunderstand the additional time filtering option). When using the 3C50model you will need to re-run nicerl2 with the gtifiles parameter instead. Details: Dealing with High Optical LoadingThe silicon detectors that NICER uses, which are sensitive to X-rays,are also sensitive to optical light. Thus, the effects of opticallight can affect NICER analysis, sometimes strongly so.The effects of optical light loading include:

• shift of energy scale (modeled in gain calibration)
• broadening of resolution (modeled in response calibration)
• increase of noise peak (modeled in SCORPEON model)
• (NEW) "noise ringer" events are enhanced

In addition, NICER experienced an optical light leak, which developedon May 22, 2023, and continues to affect operations and scientificanalysis. The primary effects of this optical light leak are toincrease the effects of optical loading on the detectors. The NICERteam is providing new tools and screening in this release to deal withthese effects.The May 22 optical light leak has dramatically increased the amount ofoptical light that can reach NICER detectors. The NICER team hasdeveloped several web pages that discuss what has occured, theoperational impacts, and how scientists can deal with the newconditions. We refer scientists to these pages for more information.

• Light Leak Overview - an overview of what occurred, and its impacts to operations and analysis
• Analysis Recommendations - analysis recommendations for scientists to deal with leak leak conditions

Separately, the NICER team has become aware of a phenomenon notedabove, which we are calling "noise ringers," that affects the 0.3-0.6keV energy range of spectra during high optical loading conditions.Essentially, this is a noise peak "tail" that shows up in theseconditions which may prevent analysis of soft spectra, or be confusedfor an X-ray feature. Our page on NoiseRingers has more detail on this phenonemon and how to deal with itfrom an analysis point of view.Details: Preventing "Shredded" GTIsThe phenomenon of "shredded GTIs" refers to the possibility of NICERevent data to have many small GTIs. The GTIs are typically a fractionof a second long, so if one looks at an exposure versus time plot, itappears that the exposure is divided into thousands of small pieces,or "shredded."Shredding can be caused by two major factors.

• On-board, the MPU is unable to transmit all packaged counts, typically due to extreme count rates
• On the ground, screening on variables that are noisy

On-board, the Measurement Processing Unit (MPU) is responsible fordigitizing counts, packaging them, and transmitting them to theground. Under extreme count rate conditions, it is possible for morecounts to be generated by the MPU than are possible to transmit(i.e. the data link rate is smaller than the data production rate).In that case, the MPU will discard packaged events, which leads to anexposure gap. Events are packaged into 100-event groups, and themaximum transmission rate is about 55 packets per second, so shreddingdue to this cause will have tens of gaps per second.On the ground, screening can produce shredding effects as well. Someof the screening variables, such as FPM_OVERONLY_COUNT (overshoots)have statistical noise. If distribution of the variable is broaderthan the range specified for screening, then the result can beshredded GTIs. For example, if overshoots range between 1 and 20ct/s, and the overonly_range is set to "0-10" then there will be manysmall GTIs as the overshoots vary back and forth over the "10"threshold.Shredded GTIs are not beneficial to scientific analysis. They makeexposure calculation difficult and inaccurate In addition, theunderlying causes (i.e. extreme count rates) would imply thatinstrument deadtimes are also extreme, again making exposurecalculations potentially inaccurate.This release employs several new techniques to reduce the problems ofShredded GTIs. For noisy screening, now will filter out small GTIsdue to noisy variables (overshoots and undershoots). For MPU shreddingdue to extreme count rates, niautoscreen is now more robust aboutletting some (or all) MPUs from skewing the allowed range.For the noisy screening portion of the issue,nicerl2/nimaketime have two new parameters called mingti anderodedilate which will remove shredded GTIs with "shred" size 5seconds or smaller. This is enabled by default.In addition, the autoscreening tool, niautoscreen, enforces somesanity checks, which prevent many MPUs with shredding from skewing thescreening. Previously, users sometimes reported that afterautoscreening, only about 8 detectors (one MPU's worth) were leftselected, and this is due to that skewing. The new algorithm enforcesstronger sanity constraints. However, a caveat to this enhancedtreatment is that users may find no good time after runningniautoscreen rather than 8 detectors. This is the desired behaviorto prevent heavily "shredded" MPUs from biasing your spectral analysis.Details: No Calibration UpdateHEASoft 6.32 / NICERDAS 11 does not involve published calibration changes.The existing published NICER calibration remains in effect.NICER analysis should continue to use NICER CALDB release xti20221001, which was released in November, 2022.Please see theNICER's Calibration Recommendationsfor current best practice,and NICERCalibration Documents for calibration release notes.For example, the required auxiliary files for background generation, andbad times for automatic screening, are included in CALDB.Also, this release has a new energy scale for both the slow (PI) andfast (PI_FAST) channels. The updates improve the cross-alignment ofthe energy scale between detectors, especially at high energies above8 keV. This change has negligible effect below 8 keV (< 5 eV onaverage). Above 8 keV there are large effects, which increase to amaximum of 300 eV for some detectors at 13 keV. In practice, fewscientists will notice a change, since most NICER science counts are inthe 0.3 - 6 keV range.Complete Change Log

• niobsermerge (NEW) to combine observation data sets
  • nicerl3-spect and nicerl3-lc updated to work with merged data sets
  • nimkfmerge now properly sets TSTART/TSTOP/DATE-OBS/DATE-END in merged outputs
• nicerl2
  • update to filtcols=NICERV5 (see niprefilter below for new columns)
  • new parameters mingti/erodedilate to avoid shredded GTIs
  • new parameters max_lowmem and thresh_range to deal with light leak situation
  • new parameters keep_forced,overshoots,undershoots, datamode for event filtering
  • new parameter keep_noisering, noisering_under for filtering noise ringer events
  • improved default verbosity with more user-helpful output
  • bug fix to properly pass incremental parameter to prep_mkfiles
  • add geomag_tcheck parameter, allow dealing with stale geomag data
• nicerl3-spect / nicerl3-lc
  • bug fix to not accept gtifile when 3C50 background model is used
  • ignore ufafile/indir/cldir parameters if not needed
  • handle EXPOSURE=0 situations more gracefully by returning status=218
  • improved default verbosity
  • clean up temporary tco plot files
• nicerl3-lc
  • allow renormalization of light curve by number of selected detectors
  • new parameters detnormtype/detnormbuff/detnormchg to accomodate normalization
  • default is detnormtype=arr52, which scales light curve to equivalent 52-detector array
• niprefilter / niprefilter2
  • new NICERV5 filter columns for filter file (below)
  • new columns FPM,MPU_NOISERING_COUNTS to diagnose noise ringer events
  • new column SUN_BODY_AZIMUTH to azimuth of sun in NICER body coordinates
  • new columns TOT_LOWMEM_SCI,FIFO for total array to diagnose lost events
  • new column DELTA_SLOW_LLD to diagnose array-averaged low energy threshold changes
  • bug fix to handle event files with no rows
• niautoscreen
  • better graphical display of censored detectors and MPUs with default chatter
  • bug fix for round-robin detection (was more agressive disabling than should be)
  • parameter limits now include min/max as well for overall sanity checking
• nimpumerge
  • new parameter fpmsel (=YES by default) to properly manage FPM selection data
• nibackgen3C50: (v1.2) fixed CEATOR keyword in output (should be CREATOR)
• nicerarf & nicerrmf: handle failures more gently by passing status=218 up to the caller
• nicerclean
  • added keep_forced,overshoots,undershoots,noisering and data mode keywords;
  • dded noisering_under parameter for noise ringer filtering support
• nimaketime
  • calculates and prints how filtering stages impact available good time
  • add min_lowmem and thresh_range parameters for dealing with light leak situation
  • add mingti and erodedilate parameters for "smoothing" shredded GTIs
• nicerl2 / nicermergeclean / nicerclean
  • remove excplicit parameters from par file, use DEFAULT instead
  • for example roundrobbinscr
  • new parameters added keep_undershoots,overshoots,forced,noisering to match nicerclean
  • new parameters datamode noisering_under parameters to match nicerclean
• nifpmsel
  • handle case of full MPU disabled better
  • handle tricky case where all FPMs in an MPU are GTI-selected by same GTI
• nigeodown
  • Removed Perl LWP::Simple requirement (was not used anyway)
  • accomodate relative paths
• niprescreen (NEW) tool for pre-screening NICER event data
  • not meant to be called by user
  • nimpucal updated to call niprescreen
  • new EVENT_FLAGS bit 0x40 for 'noise ringer' events detected
• nicer-l1-metadata: fixed excludepat= Perl (>v5.10) handling and set default to excludepat=NONE
• niextract-events: Write revised DATE-OBS, DATE-END, and (optionally) OBS_ID keywords
• nimpucal: optimized calculation of PI_RATIO
• nivigsum: Better handling of off-axis warning when large numbers of detectors are disabled
• SCORPEON
  • niscorpcalc: Bug fix to properly read SAA/trapped map metadata keywords
  • internally factor code into Perl library
• Multiple tasks updated to change overall chatter level and logging to provide more useful information to the user and less chaff

Related TopicsFor instructions on setting up a NICER analysis environment, pleasesee the Setting Up a NICER AnalysisEnvironment thread.For more information on recommended settings and calibrationrecommendations, please see the NICERCalibration Recommendations analysis thread.For release notes for the previous release (HEASoft 6.31 / NICERDAS10), please see the Software Release HEASoft6.31 thread.Modifications

• 2023-07-11 - initial draft
• 2023-07-21 - new subsection on shredded GTIs; add discussion of new niautoscreen behavior

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