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Last modified: 18 October 2012

URL: http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/download/scripts/history.html

Scripts Package:
Version History

Package Version Name Changes
18 Oct 2012 merge_obs, reproject_obs, and flux_obs Fixes to improve support for HRC observations and to avoid the (rather unhelpful) error message 'data type not understood', <type 'numpy.dtype'>, ('S0', 0, 1)).
15 Oct 2012 merge_obs, reproject_obs, and flux_obs [New]

These scripts are designed to reproject and merge observations, with the option of creating exposure-corrected images of the combined data. The merge_obs and reproject_obs scripts replace the merge_all script, depending on whether or not you want the exposure-corrected image(s).

See:

fluximage

The script has seen numerous improvements including: a simplified user interface (you can now supply just the input and output files); the output file names have been renamed; support for spectral weights file; is is now possible to create exposure maps with units of time; the run-time has been reduced when large bin sizes are used; the background subtraction done with HRC-I data can be turned off; and several minor bug fixes for handling gzipped data and grating observations.

See:

chandra_repro The script can now re-process multiple observations and it now copies, rather than links, files (reverging the change made in the 11 April 2012 release).
make_instmap_weights and save_instmap_weights These now include simple metadata in the output file which can be used by fluximage, flux_obs, and merge_obs.
$ASCDS_CONTRIB/data/*lut
plist imagej
plist ximage
[New]

A collection of color look-up tables has been added to $ASCDS_CONTRIB/data/ and available via the imagej and ximage parameter files. These files can be used in ds9 or ChIPS (image thread or colormap gallery example).

See:

  • Using the contrib color look-up tables
  • 12 Jul 2012 chandra_repro Bug fixed causing failures with HRC data.
    27 Jun 2012 chandra_repro
    • The default value of the check_vf_pha parameter has been changed from yes to no, so that the ACIS VFAINT background-filtering step will no longer be applied to relevant data sets by default. This change was made because the VFAINT filtering is known to remove valid events for sources bright enough to be affected by pile up.

    • The auxilliary files - such as bad-pixel, mask, aspect solution - are now copied when the file system does not support soft links. In earlier versions the script would exit with an error in this case.

    download_chandra_obsid

    Stack files can now be used for the obsids and filetypes arguments. So, if

    unix% cat obsids.lis
    1234
    1235
    4356
    

    then you can download these obsids by saying

    unix% download_chandra_obsid @obsids.lis
    
    chips_contrib.images module

    [New] The module contains the imextent routine for creating linear 2D transforms for an image. These can then be used in add_image calls to display the image.

    11 Apr 2012 chandra_repro
    • Warning messages produced by acis_process_events and hrc_process_events are now written out rather than being hidden (this happens even when verbose=0). Please see the Caveats section of the acis_process_events and hrc_process_events bugs pages for information on whether these warnings can be safely ignored.
    • Soft links are used on the archive data files from the output directory instead of directly copying them. A new output directory will look like:
            unix% ls -1
            acisf03726_000N003_bpix1.fits@
            acisf03726_000N003_fov1.fits@
            acisf03726_000N003_msk1.fits@
            acisf03726_000N003_mtl1.fits@
            acisf03726_000N003_stat1.fits@
            acisf03726_asol1.lis
            acisf03726_repro_bpix1.fits
            acisf03726_repro_evt2.fits
            acisf162489535N003_pbk0.fits@
            pcadf162488590N002_asol1.fits@ 
      
    16 Feb 2012 find_chandra_obsid

    [New] This script lets you search the publicly-available Chandra observations by position (RA and Dec, J2000) or name (using the CADC name resolver). It is a command-line wrapper for the Chandra Footprint Service.

    A list of matching observations, including relevant information is returned, or the data can be directly downloaded from the archive. Examples:

    unix% find_chandra_obsid 'ngc 1333'
    unix% find_chandra_obsid 12:45:32 -32:30:10
    unix% find_chandra_obsid 350.86 58.81 download=ask 
    
    combine_spectra
    • works around a bug in addresp (no TLMIN4 keyword in the output RMF file) so that combined RMF files can be used in Sherpa and X-Spec;
    • minor improvements to the handling of temporary files.
    fluximage
    • now supports setting badpixfile=NONE if you wish to create an exposure map with no bad pixels;
    • all temporary files are now created in the directory given by the tmpdir parameter, so that the script can now be run from a directory in which you do not have write permission;
    • a COMMENT line is added to the headers of the files listing the version of the script that was run (to aid in provenance tracking); for instance:

      unix% dmlist 0.5-7.0_2.3_bin8_flux.img header,clean,raw | grep COMMENT | grep fluximage 
      COMMENT      =  fluximage version 14 February 2012 /                     
      
    specextract The script no longer errors out if you set outroot to be a stack and had correct=yes and weight=no.
    ciao_contrib.runtool module The module now supports running the find_chandra_obsid script.
    ciao_contrib.cda module [New] Two Python modules have been added to support finding (ciao_contrib.cda.search) and downloading (ciao_contrib.cda.data) publicly-available data in the Chandra Data Archive. These modules are used by the find_chandra_obsid and download_chandra_obsid scripts.
    coords module

    [New] Two Python modules have been added to support some common coordinate tasks:

    • coords.resolver provides simple access to the CADC name resolver;
    • coords.format converts between many sexadecimal and decimal degree formats for Right Ascension and Declination values.
    06 Feb 2012 fluximage
    • HRC-I background is now correctly filtered before subtraction (the application of the STATUS filter was lost in the update of the script for CIAO 4.4).
    • only perform HRC-I background subtraction if the HRC background CALDB package has been installed.
    • setting badpixfile=CALDB uses the bad pixel file from the CALDB rather than the per-observation version.
    • the HRC-I instrument map is now created with the same binning as the exposure map rather than the native HRC pixel scale.
    chandra_repro Improved error checking on the input directory.
    09 Jan 2012 splitroi [New] A script for splitting the source and background regions created by the roi tool. See the An Image of Diffuse Emission thread for an example of its use.
    crates_contrib.utils module The module has three new routines:

    The make_image_crate and write_columns routines now accept dictionaries or structured arrays as input, and will convert arrays of np.int32 values to np.int64 to work around a CRATES bug.

    14 Dec 2011 multiple scripts The scripts package has been updated for the CIAO 4.4 release. The Analysis Scripts section of the release notes has a list of all the changes.

    Last modified: 18 October 2012
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