My new project is coming along nicely. Since I last posted about it, I've created a very basic program to take a preliminary look at the four GRBs I'm sampling for this study. However, the method used in the program is flawed because it plots only about a handful points that represent about 50 seconds of time integration each (created by time-filtering by hand). I need to modify the program to handle over a hundred points of 1.7 seconds each. First, I'll need to create a separate piece of code to automatically create the spectra for all those points.

This week's main accomplishment was defining the boundaries of the four energy bands I'm breaking each point into. Last week, I defined the energy ranges for each GRB by balancing the number of counts in each quarter (for example, for one GRB, modifying the ranges until each quarter had about 22,000 counts each for a total of 88,000 counts). Based on those ranges and based on the count rate evolution of the total integrated spectrum, Chryssa and I defined the standard ranges that I'll use for all four GRBs.

I've also created basic background-subtracted products based on the time and energy filtering we've decided. Once I write the code which will create many 1.7 second spectra files, I'll be able to get a much clearer idea of how this project will turn out.