Beginning Tuesday April 5, 2005, data from the Swift observatory will be made available to the community as soon as it is processed. During the 4.5 month commissioning phase, the instrument teams and the Swift Science Center and Swift Data Center staffs have been focused on shaking out the bugs in the system. Much has been changing rapidly with the data processing pipeline, the analysis tools, the documentation, and the archive during this time.
Our brief Swift Getting Started Guide is intended to get scientists comfortable with Swift data analysis. It points out the current status and limitations of Swift data and analysis, and alerts the new user to several useful sources of information. We will continue to make new documentation available, and improve the existing documentation in the near future. For help with Swift data and analysis, please use the Swift Help/FAQ link, located at the top center of any Swift Web page.
Note: The next Swift software (v2.0) and Swift CALDB releases are expected to occur on the 11th of April 2005, in conjunction with the HEAsoft v6.0 software release. The currently available Swift software is version 1.2 and requires the calibration files available in Swift CALDB.