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The New UKSSDC Website — What's New?

Welcome to the new UKSSDC website. As you can see, we have redesigned our website. We hope you find the new site easy to use and helpful. But more has changed than just the appearance:

For more details, read on; the items above link to specific entries in the details below.

The services we provide have evolved over the 7 years since Swift was launched, and the new site layout reflects this. The pages have been separated into 7 different groups, accessed via the links on the manu bar at the top of the page, just below the banner. If you have javascript enabled then hovering your mouse over one of these links will bring up a drop-down menu listing the items in that section. For non-javascript users, simply click on the link to visit the home-page for that section: that page will provide links to everything from the menu, usually via our new "sidebars."

Hopefully the layout is intuitive, but if you can't find the page you are looking for, the Site Map should help. There is also a search feature on the menu bar. We have also set up aliases so any bookmarks you have from our old website will still work, although we advise you to update your bookmarks.

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Swift Status page

The Swift Status page shows you where in the sky Swift is right now, and a star-map showing where is is pointing. When a GRB is detected by Swift, some information about the burst is shown, as the data come in.

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Reprocessed XRT data

We now routinely reprocess all XRT data as it is received, using the latest software and calibration. We have also reprocessed the entire archive of XRT data using the most recent software and calibration, and will repeat this complete reprocessing after each new release of the Swift software. These reprocessed data are used for the on-demand XRT data analysis tools. They are also available to download, complete with exposure maps. See the reprocessing documentation for more details.

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Improved XRT GRB Positions Page

As well as the Enhanced XRT Positions which we have been producing since 2007, we now determine the position of each XRT GRB afterflow in the XRT co-ordinate frame. These "unenhanced" position are determined using an exposure map and PSF fit, as is done in the position enhancement. The XRT Positions page still shows the enhanced positions by default, but now, where a GRB position could not be enhanced, the unenhanced one is given instead.

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Live XRT GRB Catalogue

In 2009 Evans et al. published a catalogue of GRB results from the XRT. Since then, Swift has detected more than 200 additional GRBs. We have therefore created a "live" version of this catalogue. When Swift detects a new GRB, the analysis which produced the catalogue data is automatically executed (after 24 hours, to allow time for sufficient data to be collected), and the results are posted on the XRT Catalogue web pages.

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More efficient service provision

The systems underpinning the UKSSDC have been changed, which should make our already very high uptime even higher. We have also changed the way the automated and on-demand jobs are executed, using a job scheduling system, which will make user-requested processing run more quickly.

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