Dear Mallory,
Much of what you ask for/describe is already implemented in the
contributed IDL script of ACIS_EXTRACT (AE), which can be found at
http://www.astro.psu.edu/xray/docs/TARA/ae_users_guide.html
This script is well documented and uses IDL to script various calls to
CIAO and FTOOLS (which most X-ray astronomers are probably familiar with
and have installed already). Specifically, in generating the arf, AE
calculates/interpolates a PSF correction function based on the PSF
fraction found for each of the PSF library energy bands (unfortunately
improvements in the fidelity of the PSF library have been abandoned by the
powers that be at the moment, so the correction function can only be
considered approximate).
As for pileup fitting with annuli (and correctly accounting for the
resultant arf and psf correction factor), I believe Pat Broos, the creator
of AE, is working on some sensible implementation of annuli within AE at
the moment.
BTW, I think most would agree with you that performing a psf correction
automatically within mkarf would be nice (although I would be bit worried
that certain assumptions might then get hardwired into the code).
Cheers,
Franz
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