TABLE OF CONTENTS:
The GCN system has been modified to incorporate the distribution
of lightcurves of GRBs, other unknown transients, and non-astrophysically-caused triggers
detected by the KONUS instrument on the Wind spacecraft.
KONUS-Wind will trigger about N times per month.
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 KONUS_LC notice type enabled
and that meet their filtering requirements.
The typical time delays range are a few hours to a few days (TBD).
These notices contain the trigger date/time and the lightcurve -- there is no positional information available for this type.
All the GCN/KONUS_LC Notices are archived within the GCN website in the Table of KONUS Lightcurves.
Notice Types, Content, and Purpose
The KONUS_LC Notice contains lightcurve (ie countrate) increases
that exceed a threshold value (over some time interval).
These increases can be caused by GRBs, other x-ray/hard_x-ray transients, and often noise.
The Notices contain the date, time, and trigger criteria (timescale and energy_band).
They occur at a rate of 170 per year.
Occurance Rate and Confidence Level
There will be about NN KONUS-Wind triggers per month (NNN in the last N months).
Given the telemetry and data processing, NN of the NN had duplicate notices (NN%).
Of those NN, NN were temporally concident with INTEGRAL-SPIACS triggers
and NN were coincident with Suzaku-WAM triggers, i.e. NN% were real astrophysical triggers.
This notice type does NOT contain any position information (unlike most of the GCN Notice types).
The KONUS automated ground software finds the transients and sends the message to GCN.
The time delays range from a few hours to a few days(TBD).
Samples of the E-mail, Cell/Pager, Short-form Cell/Pager, and Subject-only
distribution methods of the GCN/KONUS_LC Notice type are included below.
The format is very similar to the other spacecraft-instrument notices -- the GCN-standard "TOKEN: value" format.
(Also available in XML format via email and sockets.)
The 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.
This document also has explanations of the various fields in the packet
(their content, values, and implications for use),
and those same fields are manifested in the email and cell/pager formats.
(Therefore, it is useful for email-based recipients to read the
socket packet definition document
to understand the contents of the email/cell/pager notifications are.)
The KONUS_LC Notice is type=59;
NUM TYPE SOCKET FullFmt_EMAIL PAGER/CELL XML
w/Txt (all 4 variants)
=== ======== ====== ============= ================ ====
59 KONUS_LC P B B B&A
where:
P = Packet (the GCN-standard 40 longword socket packet format)
B = Body of email (the GCN-standard "TOKEN: value" format)
A = As an attachment to a full-format email (GIF, JPEG, PS, PDF, and Text).
Sites can elect to receive the KONUS_LC Notice type on a Notice-by-Notice basis.
Only the Notice_Type and Delay filters are applicable to KONUS_LC notices.
See filtering to see which filter functions are applicable.
This filtering applies to all the existing distribution methods/media.
Unlike most of the other GCN Notice types, there is no position information for the KONUS_LC type.
There is no "test" type for the KONUS_LC Notice type.
Sites are encouraged to acknowledge KONUS-Wind and GCN in their publications
based on any observations or analyses using these GCN/KONUS_LC timestamps or lightcurves.
For further information on this, please contact
Scott Barthelmy (for GCN issues),
or see the
Konus-Wind (Russia, in english),
Konus-Wind (HEASARC IPN site),
Konus-Wind (Berkeley IPN site),
KONUS (NASA/HEASARC site), and
KONUS (GSFC page).
All past notices and lightcurves are archived at:
GCN/KONUS Lightcurve table.
These KONUS_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.
Examples of the KONUS_LC Notice type of the e-mail formats are shown below.
The "/////" divider bars are NOT part of the messages.
Do not take the actual values shown in these examples as real events.
While based on flght data from the mission,
they have been adjusted to provide a broader representation
of the various combinations of fields and value ranges.
For those sites/people that use demons and/or incoming e-mail filters,
the "Subject" lines for the all notice types are constant.
The subject-line strings are (respectively):
GCN/KONUS_LIGHTCURVE
/////////////////////////e-mail format/////////////////////////////////////////
TITLE: GCN/KONUS_LIGHTCURVE NOTICE
NOTICE_DATE: Sat 12 Jan 13 18:46:11 UT
TRIGGER_DATE: 16303 TJD; 11 DOY; 13/01/11
TRIGGER_TIME: 6871.05 SOD {01:54:31.05} UT
TRIGGER_FLAGS: 0x201
LC_URL: konus_lc_130111_06871.gif
COMMENTS: KONUS Lightcurve.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The base for the given UL is http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn/notices_k/
Examples of the (regular) cell/pager formats are shown below.
There are no "Subject" lines for these e-mails sent to the cell/pager companies
because the Subject line would use up valuable character counts
from the maximum displayable for the body of the message.
/////////////////////////Cell/Pager format//////////////////////////////////////// GCN/KONUS_LC TRIGGER_DATE: 13/01/11 TIME: 01:54:31.05 UT URL=konus_lc_130111_06871.gif //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Examples of the short-form cell/pager format are shown below.
There are no "Subject" lines for these e-mails sent to the cell/pager companies,
because the Subject-line would use up valuable character counts from the maximum
displayable for the body of the message. And it was the very limited
display character count of some companies that motivated the short-form cell/pager
method in the first place.
/////////////////////////Short-Cell/Pager format//////////////////////////////////// KONUS_LC DATE: 13/01/11 T=01:54:31.05 ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/////////////////////////Subject-only format//////////////////////////////////// KONUS_LIGHTCURVE D=13/01/11 T=01:54:31.05 ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////