Making Swift out of Science (instead of just science from Swift)

A few weeks ago for our Swift Satellite​ meeting I made some "value-added" Swift models by printing or photoshopping science papers onto the pdf model that was made by the education/public outreach group from Swift.
http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2010/03/31/swmodguide5.pdf

These models were meant to represent the different science coming out of Swift. 



Paper models aren't easy to take safely on an airplane, so I kept them flat and began assembling them at my sister-in-law's house Saturday night before driving up to the meeting Monday morning.

 Originally I had planned on printing the models on top of the science paper.  I used a recent paper from Peter Milne showing some exciting results enabled by Swift -- the discovery of multiple classes of type Ia supernova based on their ultraviolet colors and the apparent change in the fractions of those classes with redshift.  The first one went into the printer upside down, so I used the original model to tell me where to cut and fold, but only the science paper is visible from the outside.  The hotel next to mine had a really cool looking purple light shining on its wall so I went over there to take a few pictures.

The second one I wanted to look more like Swift, so I took the pdf model and photoshopped (gimp-ed?) titles, author lists, figures, and tables from several key Swift papers onto the parts of the model.  When possible I tried to make it match -- there is a picture of someone assembling the BAT printed on the side of the BAT, the UVOT features pretty pictures, the XRT includes an image of the mirrors and an awesome X-ray echo from a bursting star.  The solar panels feature the four main instrument papers, Gehrels et al. 2004, Roming et al. 2005, Burrows et al. 2005, and Barthelmy et al. 2005.  I finished assembling this one during the conference dinner and gave it to the Swift Principle Investigator Neil Gehrels.

 I brought along the printouts for a third model but didn't know if I'd actually make it.  This one featured a paper by the conference organizer's grad student printed on top of the model.  Both were printed in black and white, which is why the picture below looks like it was taken in b&w.  Dieter Hartmann expressed enough interest in the other models I made, that I figured I should make the model I had planned to give to him anyway (being a local he wouldn't have to worry about transporting it).

SOUSA data use

So the Swift data is all public.  Different people request observations of different supernovae.  Sometimes multiple people request data on the same supernova.  Other people could have requested data on a particular supernova but it was already being observed.  Some of us people spend a lot of time monitoring the observations and modifying the observing plans accordingly.  Some of us were involved in getting template observations.  Others might have just pulled the public data from the archive and published it.  Sometimes there are multiple versions of the photometry independently done and published.  With my SOUSA archive, the same data might be tabulated and used by different people.  So proper credit is a tricky thing, so here are some of my thoughts.

I recommend citing any papers which originally presented Swift data on that object and where the data actually comes from (making clear whether you are using their photometry or your own reduction for example).  For the data available on my website, you should cite the Swift Optical/Ultraviolet Supernova Archive (SOUSA) paper as the source < http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014Ap%26SS.354...89B >, and the data files usually indicate if there was a previous publication.  If you make extensive use of the UVOT data and/or want advice on the analysis, it might be appropriate to involve me and add me as a coauthor.   If you are using your own reduction of the data, make sure to indicate the calibration you used (which should be the updated version of Breeveld et al. 2011) and whether they are Vega or AB magnitudes.

If using the SOUSA data, I suggest adding something like this to the observations section:

This supernova was also observed in the UV with the Ultra-Violet/Optical Telescope (UVOT; \citealp{Roming_etal_2005} on the Swift spacecraft \citep{Gehrels_etal_2004}.   The UV photometry was obtained from the Swift Optical/Ultraviolet Supernova Archive\footnote{http://swift.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/swift/sne/swift\_sn.html} (SOUSA; \citealp{Brown_etal_2014}).  The reduction is based on that of \citet{Brown_etal_2009}, including subtraction of the host galaxy count rates and uses the revised UV zeropoints and time-dependent sensitivity from \citet{Breeveld_etal_2011}.


 and in the acknowledgements:

The work made use of Swift/UVOT data reduced by P. J. Brown and released in the Swift Optical/Ultraviolet Supernova Archive (SOUSA).   SOUSA is supported by NASA's Astrophysics Data Analysis Program through grant NNX13AF35G.