XAssist: A Tool For Automated Analysis of Automated X-ray Data Analysis Data

XAssist (http://www.xassist.org) is a tool (available for download) for automatically downloading, reducing and performing preliminary analysis on Chandra, ASCA, ROSAT and (eventually) XMM-Newton data. The system is capable of reprocessing data, running source detection algorithms (a built-in routine is used fro ASCA and ROSAT data, CIAO's wavdetect is used for Chandra data), determining median background levels, filtering flares from background light curves, determining source extent (using a method that is statistically-correct in the Poisson regime), calculating the K-S statistic for variability, and extracting and fitting spectra (for sources with sufficient numbers of counts). A pipeline is currently being run on all available Chandra and ROSAT HRI observations that contain an RC3 galaxy in the field of view (to date, ~ 2000 ROSAT data sets and ~ 150 Chandra data sets have been analyzed) to demonstrate XAssist's capabilities. These catalogs are publicly available and a sample of the results will be presented. This work is supported by the NASA AISR program with contract NAG5-8092.