What's New for CIAO 4.5

Read the CIAO release notes and CALDB release notes for detailed information.

Download CIAO 4.5 and CALDB 4.5.5

Notable changes and improvemetns in CIAO 4.5 include:

• The new tg_findzo tool helps users locate the zeroth order location for heavily piled sources and in the observations that have intentionally masked out the zero order events.
• Various updates related to creating merged datasets, especially larger mosaics that exceed the standard image sizes. This includes updates to reproject_events and dmmerge to adjust the limits based on the data and to dmextract to keep a consistent definition of BACKSCAL regardless of image size.
• sherpa updates includes a comprehensive review of how grouping and filtering interact when both source and background datasets are in use. Also, a new sample_flux routine is available to allow users to compute the flux (including unabsorbed) due to a sub-component of a Sherpa model; this functionality has also been made available in the modelflux tool
• In ChIPS it is now possible annotate plots directly either via the GUI or by right-clicking on plots; text, points, lines, ellipses, boxes, polygon, and even color bars can be added.
• Numerous bug fixes and enhancements were made to many parts of the system including speed enhancements to wavdetect, fixes to ChIPS clobbering existing files, and Obsvis upgrades for number of allowed CCDs.
• As previously announced, the mkpsf tool has been withdrawn from CIAO; users should use ChaRT and MARX to simulate 2D models of the point spread function.

Changes in CALDB 4.5.5 include

• ACIS T_GAIN Epoch 51
• ACIS time-dependent QEU files version N0007
• HRC-I GMAP and PIBGSPEC for Sept 2012
• HRC-S QE versions N0012
• PIMMS Effective Area CY15 files
• Header correction for ACIS Group E BKGRND files
• Header changes to specific ACIS CTI and DET_GAIN files for optimized file selection.

The CIAO scripts package has also been updated for changes in CIAO 4.5. The main changes are:

• the package is now labelled by a number rather than a date;
• the check_ctiapp.sh script has been removed as it is no-longer needed (repro-3 is complete)
• the merge_all, mkBgReg.pl, and mkSubBgReg.pl scripts are deprecated (seethe merge_obs and diffuse emission threads for information on their replacements).

A new version of the Scripts and Modules Package has been released. The main change is the replacement of merge_all by merge_obs and reproject_obs, but there are also changes to chandra_repro and the addition of a large number of color look-up tables.

CALDB version 4.5.3 has been released with fixes to the ACIS blank-sky background files released in CALDB version 4.5.2.

Both updates are available via ciao_install or they can be downloaded individually:

• download the updated package from the Scripts page;
• Download CALDB 4.5.3

CALDB version 4.5.2 has been released with upgraded ACIS blank-sky background files, as well as new time-dependent ACIS Gain (TGAIN) files for May - July 2012 (Epoch 50). This release is available via ciao-install.

Download CALDB 4.5.2

The 9th Chandra/CIAO workshop has been scheduled for 22 - 24 April 2013. This three day workshop will feature a series of talks and hands-on sessions for both beginner and advanced CIAO users. Free registration will be required and will open shortly.

CALDB version 4.5.1 has been released with upgraded HRC-S time-dependent gain maps, to be used in reprocessing observations taken in 2012. This release is available via ciao-install.

Download CALDB 4.5.1

Download CIAO 4.4.1, CALDB 4.5, and the Scripts package

The CIAO 4.4.1 release consists of the following changes:

1. Version 2 of the Sherpa package for CIAO 4.4 has been released. Sherpa v2 provides critical bug fixes related to reading in files and is updated to use XSPEC 12.7.1 models. The following new XSPEC additive models have been also added:

   • xseplogpar
   • xsgadem
   • xsvgadem
   • xslogpar
   • xsoptxagn
   • xsoptxagnf
   • xspexmon

2. The CIAO tools package has been updated to version 2. The only change made is to update the internal leap-second library used by CIAO.

CALDB version 4.5.0 has been released with a new focal plane temperature upper-limit, as well as new HRC GAPLOOKUP (degap) tables. Furthermore, the calibration validity end dates have been reset for the 38 affected ACIS ObsIDs, listed in the CalDB Caveats page and five HRC ObsIDs affected by similar problems with their GMAP and HRC-S QEU. This release is available via ciao-install.

Download CALDB 4.5.0

A new version of the Scripts and Modules Package has been released; download the updated package from the Scripts page.

• In 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 auxiliary 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.

• The download_chandra_obsid script can now accept CIAO stack files for its obsids and filetypes arguments.

CALDB version 4.4.10 has been released with an upgraded ACIS QE contamination model (version N0007), as well as new time-dependent ACIS Gain (TGAIN) files for Feb - April 2012 (Epoch 49). This release is available via ciao-install.

Download CALDB 4.4.10

A new version of the Scripts and Modules Package has been released; download the updated package from the Scripts page.

• The chandra_repro script has been updated to:

  1. warning messages produced by acis_process_events and hrc_process_events are now written out rather than being hidden;
  2. soft link archive files to output directory rather than copying.

CALDB version 4.4.8 has been released with new time-dependent ACIS Gain (TGAIN) files for 01 Nov 2011 - 31 January 2012 (Epoch 48) . This release is available via ciao-install.

Download CALDB 4.4.8

A new version of the Scripts and Modules Package has been released; download the updated package from the Scripts page.

• The find_chandra_obsid 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 (download_chandra_obsid can also be used). 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 
  

  The ciao_contrib.runtool module has been updated to include support for find_chandra_obsid.

• The combine_spectra script has been updated to:

  1. 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;
  2. minor improvements to the handling of temporary files.

• The fluximage script has been updated to:

  1. support setting badpixfile=NONE if you wish to create an exposure map with no bad pixels;
  2. create all temporary files 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;

  3. add a COMMENT line 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 /                     
     

• The specextract script has been updated so that it will not error out if you set outroot to be a stack and had correct=yes and weight=no.

• 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.

• Two Python modules have been added to support some common coordinate tasks:

  1. coords.resolver provides simple access to the CADC name resolver;
  2. coords.format converts between many sexadecimal and decimal degree formats for Right Ascension and Declination values.

A new version of the Scripts and Modules Package has been released; download the updated package from the Scripts page.

• 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).

    If you have used fluximage with HRC-I data in CIAO 4.4, re-run the script to apply the correct background-subtraction. The fluximage command is recorded in the file header:

    unix% dmhistory ciao44_bin32_thresh.img fluximage
    fluximage infile="hrcf00144N005_evt2.fits" outroot="ciao44"
    binsize="32" bands="::1.1" asolfile="" badpixfile="" maskfile=""
    pbkfile="" dtffile="" normalize="no" expmapthresh="1.5%"
    parallel="yes" tmpdir="/tmp" cleanup="no" clobber="yes"
    verbose="1"
    

  • 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.

A new version of the Scripts and Modules Package has been released; download the updated package from the Scripts page.

• splitroi: a new 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.

• The crates_contrib.utils module has three new routines:

  • make_image_crate
  • add_colvals
  • add_keyval

  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.

Read the CIAO release notes and CALDB release notes for detailed information.

Download CIAO 4.4 and CALDB 4.4.7