CIAO 4.1 and CALDB 4.1 released 15 December 2008
==================================================
The Chandra X-ray Center (CXC) is pleased to announce that version
4.1 of CIAO ("Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observations") and
version 4.1 of CALDB ("Calibration Database") are available for download
from:
http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/download/
NOTE: CALDB 4.1 can only be used with CIAO 4.1 and CIAO4.1 can only be
used with CALDB4.1.
-----------------------------------
CIAO 4.1 features a complete new version of Sherpa, the modeling and
fitting package (http://cxc.harvard.edu/sherpa). This version gives
users a full access to internal data structures - within the Python and
S-lang environments - that allows a great flexibility in data analysis
and modeling. There are several new features and upgrades since Sherpa
Beta; the About the Sherpa Release page
(http://cxc.harvard.edu/sherpa/about.html) highlights new items and
outlines differences in comparison to Sherpa 3.4. Extensive
documentation upgrades were made both in the software package and on
the web site.
Other notable changes in CIAO 4.1 are:
*enhancements and bug fixes in the Data Model ASCII kernel. Both
FITS and ASCII files are now accepted by most CIAO tools.
*several new tools, which were initially developed for use with the
Chandra Source Catalog: aprates, dmellipse, eff2evt, lim_sens, mkpsfmap
*significant work has been done on the tool wavdetect to fix the
bugs identified in CIAO 4.0: changing the falsesrc parameter value, a
lower limit on the sigthresh value, and limitations in the PSF information
*the CIAO GUIs - prism, peg, and taskmonitor - have been rewritten
in Gtk. The prism rewrite includes several enhancements, such as
expanding vectors and arrays inline, tabbed frames to load multiple
files into a single prism window, and a basic GUI for customizing plots.
*version 4 of the CALDB library, caldb4-module, and calquiz tool.
CIAO tools have been upgraded to use the new library and calibration
database.
*all the enhancements and bug fixes to the CIAO tools.
*due to simplifications made to the behavior of lines, labels,
regions, and points in CIAO 4.1, the binary state files created by ChIPS
in CIAO 4.0 can not be read into CIAO 4.1 (an error message about an
incompatible version will be returned by when trying to do so).
Read the complete CIAO 4.1 release notes, including the section "How
CIAO 4.1 and CALDB 4.1 Affect Your Analysis" at:
http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/releasenotes/ciao_4.1_release.html
We plan to support CIAO3.4 and CALDB 3.X for the near future
The CIAO3.4 web site is now accessible at:
http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao3.4
while the CALDB3.X is accessible at
http://cxc.harvard.edu/caldb3
-----------------------------
In tandem with CIAO 4.1 is the release of the Chandra Calibration
Database version 4.1.
CALDB 4.1.0 is the first public release and official installation of the
Chandra CalDB4 directory, index, and interface software upgrade.
CalDB 4.1.0 includes:
* ACIS -120C T_GAIN Epoch 35 updates (four new files covering Epoch
34 and 35).
* ACIS -110C/-120C BI chip mkacisrmf input file for
NON-CTI-corrected data.
* HRMA REEF version N0001 (Encircled Counts Fraction). This file is
employed specifically in the CIAO 4.1 tool "mkpsfmap."
CALDB 4.1 may *only* be used with CIAO 4.1.
Detailed information can be found in the Chandra
Calibration Database website at http://cxc.harvard.edu/caldb/
---------------------------------
CIAO 4.1 is distributed for the following platforms:
* Solaris 8 (SunOS5.8)
* Fedora Core 4
* Fedora Core 8
* Mac OS X PowerPC 10.4
* Mac OS X Intel 10.4 and 10.5
More details at http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/download/platforms.html
-----------------------------------
As always please send questions and requests for enhancements to the CXC
HELPDESK (http://cxc.harvard.edu/helpdesk/).
CIAO 4.1 is a collaborative effort between the SAO/CXC Science Data
Systems, the SAO/CXC Data Systems, and MIT/CXC personnel.
Antonella Fruscione (for the CIAO development team)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 12 2013 - 01:00:12 EST