23October2007 
modified from the 15Oct2007 version 

Current version of the manuscript: http://astro.swarthmore.edu/~cohen/projects/betacru/bcru_v12.pdf, .tex
(note: update in version number)

Tasks that must be done are in regular black typeface, while less crucial tasks as well as question and notes are in light gray. Comments from me, that you might want to take note of, but which do not necessarily require any action, are italicized. 

Remaining tasks for beta Cru paper: 

- Eric is writing some new, more detailed text about cluster membership and age, which will be inserted in sec. 2.  Eric, is the footnote in the first column of p. 2 OK?  

- David added a bit more about the beta Cephei pulsation properties (p. 2), including hints of a 4th and 5th periodicity in the WIRE star tracker data (Cuypers et al. 2002); these two additional periods are now noted in Tab. 1.  A note about the phase shift is now in sec. 4.2.

- Table 1 (p. 3) - I'm pretty happy with what we have here, but perhaps we can go over these numbers, especially in the context of the Hubrig et al. (2006) paper, which Marc pointed out.  Note: I'm going with the III luminosity class designation, from Hiltner, Garrison, and Schild (1969).  It appears from my ADS searching that Nolan Walborn has never published anything on this star. 

- Table 2 (p. 4): Are we happy with the naming we're using?  A related issue - throughout the paper, beta Cru A or A1+2 is referred to as "beta Cru" while beta Cru D is referred to as "the companion" - are we OK with this?   We now have some text on p. 3 suggesting that the other three sources are AGN.  *We are going to take a look at (overplot registered images) the ROSAT pointing and also the 2MASS data.  I still need to figure out how to include a region mask (showing the location of other sources) in the fits image I load into Aladin. You can have a look at the image and the three region masks: http://astro.swarthmore.edu/~cohen/projects/betacru/image/ as well as an image of the chips with all three masks: http://astro.swarthmore.edu/~cohen/projects/betacru/image/data_with_sources.png (note that the 45 arc sec companion's location coincidentally falls nearly on the perimeter of the circle drawn around beta Cru).  *I'm not sure I believe the source (of the three Mike found) that's closest to beta Cru.  What do you guys think? 

- Figs. 4 & 5 (p. 6 & 7):  The plot(s) of the MEG spectrum and the best-fit thermal (vAPEC) model is now a separate figure - Fig. 5.  The top two panels together show the whole spectrum (minus the edges where there are no lines), and Marc's tour-de-force ISIS fit.  The bottom panel shows a blow up of 4 Angstroms with an expanded y-axis too.  It's suppose to allow the reader to more honestly assess the nature and quality of the model fit.  There's lots of annotation on the top two panels, none on the bottom panel.  This is a complicated figure, and any feedback from you would be appreciated.  Marc: Is it reasonable to try to put formal error bars on the model parameters listed in Tab. 3 (p. 6)?  What do you think of my not reporting the N abundance bc/s it's based on only the H-like line strength? Would it be easy for you to rerun the fit with a somewhat higher ISM column density - just to verify that its value doesn't matter?  Finally, Marc, do you have an unabsorbed x-ray flux (on 0.5-8keV, I guess) that corresponds to your new vAPEC model?  …I will make a b/w version of it; the current color version doesn't look so good in b/w.  I think we'll go with on-line color, though. 

- Marc, do you want to take a look at the dispersed spectrum of the companion and try fitting a 2-T APEC model in ISIS with adaptive smoothing?   Seems like overkill, perhaps.  (pp. 11-12).  

- Marc, how would you qualitatively characterize the morphology of the companion’s light curve (or EDF), in the context of what’s seen in active low-mass stars (e.g. in COUP)?  Do you want to write a sentence or two to put it in context?  *should we show Mike's new hardness ratio plot as part of Fig. 16?  The plot is available here: http://astro.swarthmore.edu/~cohen/projects/betacru/companion_hardness.pdf

- Discussion and Conclusions section:  I’ve significantly re-written this; motivated primarily by discussions with Stan et al. about the plausibility of the shock scenario.  Any comments are welcome, of course.  The overall tone is much more circumspect than it was originally.  The abstract has been changed accordingly, too.  

Regarding the companion, do we need to flesh out the discussion about its likely optical/IR properties and its likely status as a PMS star?  

- Marc, Eric: is what we say about the fx/fv expectations for PMS stars reasonable?  My statement about fx/fv and the expectation of the companion being a PMS K star is based on the fact that fx/fv ~ 10^-2 for most of the ROSAT PMS sources.  If this ratio is taken for the Chandra companion, we get L_V ~ 10^32.