CIAO 4.5 Release Notes

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Notable changes and improvements in CIAO 4.5:

• The mkpsf tool has been withdrawn, as advertised in the CIAO 4.4 release notes. Users should use either ChaRT or MARX to simulate the point spread function.
• A new tool, tg_findzo, has been released to provide an accurate 0-th order location for those datasets with heavy pileup or with 0-th order blocked.
• The modelflux tool has updates to produce unabsorbed fluxes.
• Updates to reproject_events and dmmerge allow for mosaics to be created that exceed the typical image sizes.
• wcs_match now has the option of computing a simple translation only solution as well as the existing translate, rotate, and scale method.
• Updates to the ChIPS GUI to allow annotations (lines, points, etc) to be added directly via the GUI.
• Updates to sherpa include 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 due to a sub-component of a Sherpa model.

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• How CALDB 4.5.5 Affects Your Analysis
• Installation
• Tools
• Parameter Files
• Data Model
• ChIPS
• Sherpa
• GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces)
• Analysis Scripts
• Libraries
• Environment
• Documentation

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How CALDB 4.5.5 Affects Your Analysis

ACIS Imaging and Grating Data

• Time-dependent ACIS Gain (TGAIN) Files for -120 C Data

  There are new time-dependent ACIS Gain (TGAIN) files for Aug - Oct 2012 (Epoch 51):

  acisD2012-05-01t_gainN0005.fits
  acisD2012-05-01t_gainN0006.fits
  acisD2012-08-01t_gainN0002.fits
  acisD2012-08-01t_gain_biN0002.fits (new default for SDP current processing)
  

  The files are applicable to -120 C focal plane temperature only.

  Users working with ACIS data taken since 01 May 2012 may wish to reprocess to improve the TGAIN calibration in their data. The DATE-OBS header keyword records the observation start date.

  Note that unless you are fitting a spectra with oxygen emission lines, the gain refinement is unlikely to have an effect on the spectrum larger than the uncertainties in determining the gain.

• ACIS Time-varying QEU files

  The ACIS Quantum Efficiency Uniformity (QEU) has been varying over time due to event grade migration, a Charge Transfer Inefficiency (CTI) effect. This time dependence is corrected with the addition of new ACIS CALDB QEU files in 2-year intervals. This is a 3% correction for CTI-corrected S3 events (4% CTI-uncorrected) and a 1% correction for FI chips over the life of the mission.

  acisD2000-01-29qeuN0007.fits
  acisD2002-02-01qeuN0007.fits
  acisD2004-02-01qeuN0007.fits
  acisD2006-02-01qeuN0007.fits
  acisD2008-02-01qeuN0007.fits
  acisD2010-02-01qeuN0007.fits
  acisD2000-01-29qeuN0005B.fits
  acisD2002-02-01qeuN0005B.fits
  acisD2004-02-01qeuN0005B.fits
  acisD2006-02-01qeuN0005B.fits
  acisD2008-02-01qeuN0005B.fits
  acisD2010-02-01qeuN0005B.fits
  

HRC Imaging and Grating Data

• HRC-I GMAP Upgrades

  To continue to address the decline of the gain of the HRC-I, a new set of time-dependent gain maps are available in CALDB 4.5.5 which differ from the previous set in two ways: the maps are based on (and intended for use with) the scaled sum of amplifier signals (SUMAMPS) instead of PHA, as SUMAMPS is a better proxy for spectral response than PHA; and the time dependence of the gain decline is corrected using an inverse exponential plus linear function fit to temporal correction factors derived from AR Lac, G21.5-0.9 and HZ 43, instead of a pure linear function fit to the median AR Lac PHAs.

  By default, PI is now calculated from scaled SUMAMPS ("SAMP") instead of PHA. The new gainmaps, listed below, convert SAMP to PI, correcting for the gain declines which have occurred since launch.

  HRC-I 
  hrciD1998-10-30sampgainN0001.fits
  hrciD1999-10-04sampgainN0001.fits
  hrciD2000-12-12sampgainN0001.fits
  hrciD2002-01-26sampgainN0001.fits
  hrciD2003-02-22sampgainN0001.fits
  hrciD2004-11-25sampgainN0001.fits
  hrciD2005-10-17sampgainN0001.fits
  hrciD2006-09-20sampgainN0001.fits
  hrciD2007-09-17sampgainN0001.fits
  hrciD2008-09-07sampgainN0001.fits
  hrciD2009-09-24sampgainN0001.fits
  hrciD2010-09-25sampgainN0002.fits
  hrciD2011-09-19sampgainN0001.fits
  hrciD2012-09-27sampgainN0001.fits
  
  HRC-S 
  hrcsD1999-07-22t_gmapN0002.fits
  hrcsD2012-03-29t_gmapN0002.fits
  

• HRC-I PIBGSPEC Upgrades

  The particle background in the HRC, which had been increasing due to the drop in solar activity, has begun to decrease again. Yearly background spectra obtained from AR Lac observations with HRC-I are now available in CALDB 4.5.5; The CIAO "HRC-I Background Spectra Files" thread describes how they can be used to filter on PI and reduce background.

  hrciD1999-10-04pibgspecN0001.fits
  hrciD2000-12-12pibgspecN0001.fits
  hrciD2002-01-26pibgspecN0001.fits
  hrciD2003-02-22pibgspecN0001.fits
  hrciD2004-11-25pibgspecN0001.fits
  hrciD2005-10-17pibgspecN0001.fits
  hrciD2006-09-20pibgspecN0001.fits
  hrciD2007-09-17pibgspecN0001.fits
  hrciD2008-09-07pibgspecN0001.fits
  hrciD2009-09-24pibgspecN0001.fits
  hrciD2010-09-25pibgspecN0001.fits
  hrciD2011-09-19pibgspecN0001.fits
  hrciD2012-09-27pibgspecN0001.fits
  

• HRC-S QE version N0012 Upgrade

  On 29 March 2012, the High Voltage settings of the HRC-S microchannel plates were increased to address a loss in quantum efficiency as a function of wavelength, caused by a sag in gain over time. Analysis of data prior to and after the adjustment resulted in a wavelength-dependent correction to the HRC-S QE, now available in CALDB 4.5. Users can expect an increase in counts of 4.5-6% dependent upon wavelength, which is corrected by the revised QE map. More refinements to the QE for HRC-S will likely follow in future years.

  hrcsD1999-07-22qeN0012.fits
  hrcsD2012-03-29qeN0012.fits
  

---

Installation

Supported Platforms

• CIAO 4.5 is supported on:

  • Linux 32 bit and 64 bit (tested on CentOS 5.8 and Red Hat Enterprise 6 )
  • Mac OS X 10.6 Intel 64 bit
  • Mac OS X 10.7 & 10.8 Intel 64 bit

  The following platforms are no longer supported:

  • Mac OS X 10.5
  • Mac PPC
  • Mac 32 bit
  • Solaris 10

Updates to the ciao-install Installation Script

• The script will not run if called with sudo, i.e. "sudo bash ciao-install". If ciao-install encounters a permissions problem, it prints instructions on what to fix in order to install CIAO and gives the user the chance to specify a different installation directory.

Remove old parameter files

• With every new CIAO release, some parameter files have changed: new parameters may be added and occasionally old ones removed or renamed. Deleting or renaming the local parameter directory ensures that the correct parameter files will be accessed the first time a tool is run:

  unix% rm ~/cxcds_param4/*
  

Remove the fontconfig cache

• The GUI applications (e.g. prism, ChIPS, ds9) used in CIAO may not run correctly if there are incompatible .fontconfig files cached on the user's system. To remove the .fontconfig cache:

  unix% rm ~/.fontconfig/*
  

IPython Settings

• CIAO 4.5 now includes a newer version of IPython, 0.13. If upgrading from CIAO 4.4 or earlier, the ipython configuration files stored in the users home directory are incompatible with the new version; a new copy will be installed in a new directory: $HOME/.ipython-ciao4.5. If you have made customizations with earlier version of CIAO, you will need to manually migrate those changes to work with CIAO 4.5.

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Tools

acis_find_afterglow

• Updated the logic to correctly determine if an event should be removed from the search for hotpixels based on whether the pixel is part of an afterglow or not.

addresp

• Added additional error checking to catch situation where the inputs are invalid (empty, zero row PHA file) and when various inputs are missing (lookupTab).

• The ranges of columns in input file are now copied to the output.

calquiz

• add two command-line options, "echo_qual" and "echo_fidel", to return the values of CAL_QUAL and FIDELITY respectively.

dmcoords

• The internal help failed to mention the MSC command to set mirror spherical coordinates.

dmimgfilt

• Two new sigma-clipping filters are now available: 3sigmedian and 3sigmean.

dmextract

• PHA files made by "dmextract opt=pha1" write a BACKSCAL keyword containing a normalized extraction area. The usual normalization uses the TLMAX/TLMIN keyword values, but for ACIS a fixed value of (8192)**2 is now used in order to correctly handle the new behaviour of the reprojection tools. This value is set in the $ASCDS_INSTALL/data/cxo.mdb file.

dmhistory

• Correct problem if comment contain "%" sign.

dmmerge

• Set (TLMIN,TLMAX) for output SKY and POS to the union of the ranges (TLMIN,TLMAX) from each input file. Allows event files to be merged to create mosaics larger than default image sizes.

dmsort

• Fix problem when first sort column is string and multiple rows have same value.

hrc_process_events

• Update to support gain tables with arbitrary number of rows.

mkacisrmf

• Improved error reporting. Will now warn users when the input grid is truncated to match the calibration data.

mkexpmap

• Fixed units from "sec" to "s"

• GRATING keyword is now copied from input instrument maps

mkgrmf

• When interpolating or extrapolating the grating efficiencies, any resulting values less than zero will be set to zero. (Change is in ardlib)

• DETCHANS, HDUCLAS2, etc keywords were added to the EBOUNDS extension of the output file for better OGIP compliance.

• The value of the HDUCLAS2 keyword in the output file has been corrected.

mkpsfmap

• Users can now supply a spectrum and the psfmap will be spectrally weighted.

  By setting

  energy=INDEF
  

  user can then set the spectrum parameter to a file name. The input is the same format as used by mkinstmap and user can use the same make_instmap_weights tool to create it.

mkpsf

• Withdrawn. Users should use either ChaRT or MARX to simulate the point spread function.

modelflux

• A new option to calculate the unabsorbed flux has been added. If the user does choose this new option, then both absorbed and unabsorbed fluxes are calculated and reported to stdout, and written to the modelflux parameter file.

prop_colden

• Output coordinates are now identified as having been converted to B1950

• Fixed issue where later entries in a file of input positions were handled incorrectly

reproject_events

• Update TLMIN/TLMAX for SKY and POS only, such that it represents the union of the actual data range with the "legal data range". Allows for mosaics of large datasets that exceed the standard image sizes.

tg_resolve_events

• Units on columns are copied to the output.

tg_findzo

• This new tool can be used to locate the 0-th order location in those observations that suffer from pileup or were performed with the 0th order events masked out.

wavdetect

• Internal updates various parts of the code to increase performance and address memory leaks.

• Wavelet scales > 100 are now fully supported.

wcs_match

• A new option has been added that will compute a simple translation-only solution based on the matched sources. This can be used when the full translate, rotate, and scale solution is biased by spatial distribution of matched sources.

---

Parameter Files

aprates

• The min values for alpha and beta are now set to 0

calquiz

• add two parameters, "echo_qual" and "echo_fidel", to return the values of CAL_QUAL and FIDELITY respectively.

dmimgfilt

• The function parameter has two new options: 3sigmean and 3sigmedian.

mkpsfmap

• New spectrum parameter allows output to be spectrally weighted.

wcs_match

• A new translation only solution is available via the new method parameter. The default "rst" uses the full rotate, scale, and translate solution where as the new translation only option is selected with method=trans.

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Data Model

Enhancements & Bug Fixes

• It is now possible to discriminate between 0 and small numerical values (e.g. values smaller than ~ 10^^-16) in a Data Model filter.

  With the file:

  unix% cat tst.dat
  #data
  0.0
  1.0e-13
  1.0e-15
  1.0e-16
  1.0e-18
  1.0e-10
  1.0e-20
  

  CIAO 4.5:

  unix% dmlist "tst.dat[data = 0]" data,clean
  #  data
                      0
  unix% dmlist "tst.dat[data > 0]" data,clean
  #  data
                  1E-13
                  1E-15
                  1E-16
                  1E-18
                  1E-10
                  1E-20
  

  CIAO 4.4:

  unix% dmlist "tst.dat[data = 0]" data,clean
  #  data
                      0
                  1E-16
                  1E-18
                  1E-20
  unix% dmlist "tst.dat[data > 0]" data,clean
  #  data
                  1E-13
                  1E-15
                  1E-10
  

• The Data Model filter expression

  [sky=circle(a,b,c),y=m:n,p:q]

  where the same columns (in this case y are involved in both a spatial filter and a range filter) is ambiguous - is the combination meant to intersect or union the two filters?

  The correct form of the filter is to use the && or || terms to indicate how the filters should be combined, but this did not work in CIAO 4.4.

  It is now possible (in CIAO 4.5) to say

  unix% dmcopy "evt.fits[sky=circle(4096,4096,100)&&y=4020:4100,4250,4350]" filt1.fits
  unix% dmcopy "evt.fits[sky=circle(4096,4096,100)||y=4020:4100,4250,4350]" filt2.fits
  

  There was also a related problem when using && to combine filters on the same field; CIAO 4.5 allows you to use expressions like

  unix% dmlist "acisf00635_000N001_evt3.fits[(grade=2)&&(grade=0)]" counts 
  

• The dmcopy tool no longer displays a warning message saying Filter data type mismatch when filtering on BIT or BOOLEAN (logical) columns.

• Improve the error message generated if an exclude filter is used after a range filter in the same virtual file expression, since these can not be combined.

• The FITS keywords BSCALE and BZERO have been added to the list of reserved keywords used by the Data Model.

• Improvements have been made in reporting errors in the syntax of column filters.

• The Ascii Kernel for the Data Model has seen improvements in the handling of quoted strings.

PyCrates

• The get_filename method of a crate now returns any Data Model filter used to open the file; in CIAO 4.4 it just returned the file name.

  CIAO 4.5:

  chips-1> cr = read_file("4948.asol[#row=:100][cols ra,dec,roll]")
  chips-2> cr.get_filename()
           '4948.asol[#row=:100][cols ra,dec,roll]'
  

  CIAO 4.4:

  chips-1> cr = read_file("4948.asol[#row=:100][cols ra,dec,roll]")
  chips-2> cr.get_filename()
           '4948.asol'
  

• The add_col routine will now create a column name - of the form COLUMNm, where m is the column number - if the Crate data object has no name (in CIAO 4.4 the column would have been named "()" when the data was written out to a file).

• The set_key routine has been added; it either creates a new keyword, or updates an existing one, in the file header.

• The read_pha routine, and the PHACrateDataset object, now use the block called SPECTRUM as the "most-interesting block", that is, consider this the current block, regardless of its position in the file (in CIAO 4.4 the first block would be used, which could be a WMAP block).

• There were problems writing out files if a compressed version (i.e. *.gz) of the file already existed.

• It is no longer necessary to use the snip method of the parent object of a Crate - the object returned by the get_dataset method - to free up memory from a crate. The following code will still work, but the call to snip now does nothing and this method is deprecated, and will be removed in a forthcoming major release of CIAO.

  try:
      cr = read_file(filename)
      ... process contents ...
  
  finally:
      cr.get_dataset().snip()
  

---

ChIPS

Major enhancements to the ChIPS GUI

• It is now possible to add annotations - labels, lines, points, regions, or color bars - directly from the ChIPS GUI.

  Users can add an annotation by selecting the Annotation sub-menu from the Right-Mouse-Button menu of the ChIPS window:

  

  or from the Annotate menu item in the main GUI window:

  

• The "position" values shown in the GUI - e.g. for axis limits and for the coordinates of objects such as labels - have been updated to support scientific and sexagesimal notation and to provide better precision. Values can be adjusted with the keyboard, using the up and down buttons, or by scrolling the mouse scroll button up and down.

• It is now possibile to change the position - and coordinate system - for most annotations, such as labels, from the main GUI window. You can still select these objects and drag them with the mouse, or move them with the arrow keys.

• The GUI interface for using, and setting, manual (i.e. arbitrary) tick positions on axes (e.g. as can be done with the set_arbitrary_tick_positions command), has been greatly improved:

  • when a row is highlighted return or space will allow you to edit the cell, up/down arrow keys will allow you to change rows, left/right arrow keys will allow you to change column, and tab will move the focus from the columns to the Add button;
  • when editing a cell tab, return, or an arrow key will allow you commit the change;
  • and after clicking on the Add button a new row is added, the table scrolls down to that row and sets the focus to that row.

Other changes

• In CIAO 4.4 the ~/.chips.rc file that ChIPS creates (if one does not exist) did not contain any of the GUI preference settings. To check, you can

  unix% mv ~/.chips.rc ~/.chips.rc.old
  unix% chips -b
  unix% diff ~/.chips.rc.old ~/.chips.rc
  

  and adjust the ~/.chips.rc file for settings that have changed and you wish to keep the old values.

  In the above, the -b option makes ChIPS run in "batch mode", where it exits after processing any command-line script; in this case as we supply no file it just runs the ChIPS set up code, which includes creating the ~/.chips.rc file, and then exits.

• Curves containing a single point were not being displayed.

• Support for curves containing values which vary by very small amounts, or are very small, has been improved.

• When given a file name or a Crate, make_figure, add_curve, and add_histogram now support multiple values in a single row, as used by PHA2 files.

• Creating images from images, Crates, or numpy arrays with single dimension will now produce a 1 x n image, where n is the number of elements in the array. For instance:

  chips> add_image(np.arange(256))
  chips> set_data_aspect_ratio('')
  chips> limits(Y_AXIS, 0.5, 1.5)
  

• The add_histogram call has been fixed so that

  chips> add_histogram(x, y, ['*.color', 'red'])
  

  now sets the fill.color attribute.

• Adding closed regions - i.e. those regions where the first and last coordinates are the same - caused the ChIPS server to crash.

• The first coordinate pair returned by pick or get_pick was sometimes incorrect.

• The boundary used to highlight a selected label was too large when the label contained greek characters, or was invalid for regions created in a world coordinate data system.

• It was not possible to drag plots which were embedded within other plots (e.g. the smaller plot in the Placing one plot within another plot ChIPS gallery example).

• The binary state file created by save_state now contains settings for the axis ticklabel.style attribute. This means that CIAO 4.5 state files can not be read into earlier versions of CIAO, but earlier versions can still be read into CIAO 4.5.

• The make_script output now uses the correct coordinate system for annotations and improvements have been made to support visualizations containing multiple data systems (e.g. multiple axis pairs in a plot).

• The set_arbitrary_tick_positions command now works correctly when the label for the first tick mark is an empty string (e.g. see the Adjusting axis labels Gallery example).

  Axes that were set to arbitrary mode before a call to bind_axes would not update to display the correct tick positions.

  Ascii scripts created by make_script did not handle axes with arbitrary tick marks.

• The coordsys attribute of attribute objects - such as ChipsLabel - could not be used to specify the coordinate system when creating an annotation.

  chips> lbl = ChipsLabel()
  chips> lbl.coordsys = FRAME_NORM
  chips> lbl.size = 18
  chips> lbl.color = "olive"
  chips> lbl.font = "times"
  chips> lbl.halign = 1
  chips> add_label(0.95, 0.92, "A label", lbl)
  

• Improvements in the formatting of the numeric labels of axes:

  • changing the tick axis format to %Z or %# could cause array bounds errors and memory leaks;
  • binding of WCS axes and then changing the tickformat did not re-display the majorgrid lines correctly;
  • the GUI did not always display the correct setting for the tickformat in the axis properties area when sexagesimal formats such as %ra, %RA, or %DEC were used.

• The handling of user-defined fonts - i.e. those loaded with the load_font command - has been improved in the GUI.

• Several corner cases have been fixed that could cause invalid PDF files to be created.

• Several minor improvements to the GUI, including:

  • there were problems in over-writing files when using the File/Save As menu item to save either Python scripts or a binary state file;
  • the color selection are has been enhanced so that - when displaying the list of color names, rather than the color wheel - the currently-selected color is highlighted (if there is a match), and information on the value of the default color is provided (when selected);
  • regions can now be deleted from the ChIPS plot by selecting the region (so that the selection handles are displayed) and then use the delete key on the keyboard;
  • the default option of "Pan mode" was not working correctly when the visualization was created (users would have to switch modes and then back to Pan mode to get it to work);
  • the show_gui command did not correctly set the path of the embedded Python console when called with an argument;
  • the interactive Python shell now traps attempts to end the shell, such as calls to quit or exit;
  • the Save Dialogs now add saved files to the Recently-Used list, which can then be viewed in later uses of Save/Open file;
  • terminology has been cleaned up to use 'Frame' consistently in the help and menus of the GUI (in CIAO 4.4 'Frame' and 'Pane' were used inter-changeably);
  • and the FAQ menu item has been removed.

• ChIPS will now exit faster when the plot contains a large number of objects.

---

Sherpa

Grouping

• Fixes to retain filters after dynamic grouping

• A new rule, that when a dynamic grouping scheme is applied to a data set, it is also automatically applied to all associated background data sets. Commands such as:

  group_snr(3)

  now apply this grouping condition to both source and background. It is no longer necessary to manually group the background(s). The filter is also correctly updated for both source and background.

  Note that this means that source and background will have *different* arrays of grouping flags. If the background has fewer counts, for example, then it will naturally have fewer groups if all groups must meet the condition that the SNR >= 3. The user can still set a different background grouping scheme with:

  group_snr(3)
  group_snr(5, bkg_id=1)
  

  Here, both source and background will be grouped with SNR >= 3 by the first command; but the background alone will then be grouped by SNR >= 5 by the second command.

Models

• The Sersic2d model has been added. This model is a generalization of the de Vaucouleurs profile (i.e., the exponent is allowed to be values other than 4).

Fake

• fake_pha will now include simulated background in the faked dataset.

User Interface

• A new function, sample_flux, has been added to calculate the unabsorbed energy flux due to a Sherpa model. It returns a sample of parameters with a corresponding flux and a flux uncertainty for a model component or a combination of model components. The model components have to be previously defined and used in the fit. The samples are generated from the multi-variate normal distributions with the scales defined by covariance (if at the best fit) or supplied (as "scales"). The flux is calculated for each set of new parameters. The returned flux value is given by a sample's median with the lower and upper quantiles defined by the confidence level supplied to the function.

---

GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces)

Prism

• Fixed issues with some icons not displaying in prism (e.g the tab icon display the status of the file)

Obsvis

• New tri-state toggle switch to identify optional ACIS CCDs.

• New functionality was added to show and hide the target, nominal aimpoint, and optical axis markers. Toggles in the Display Parameters frame (left side of the obsvis gui above the button row) allow per FOV selection of which markers are visible. In addition, the initial settings of the markers can be specified in the Preferences dialog.

• Changed startup script from ksh to bash

---

Analysis Scripts

Version names

• The labeling of the scripts package has changed from a date to a numeric system; this version number is included in the $ASCDS_CONTRIB/VERSION.CIAO_scripts file - e.g.

  unix% cat $ASCDS_CONTRIB/VERSION.CIAO_scripts 
  scripts 4.5.1 Thursday, December 13, 2012
  

specextract

• The script has been updated so that it will exit with an error if the input event file is missing a CTI_APP keyword (see the note on the removal of the check_ctiapp.sh script below).

Removed: check_ctiapp.sh

• The check_ctiapp.sh script - which is no longer needed because the data issues in the archive it was needed for have long-since been fixed - has been removed from the scripts package with the CIAO 4.5 release. Please see the CTI why topic for more information.

Deprecated: merge_all

• The merge_all script is deprecated and will be removed in a later release of CIAO. Please use one or more of merge_obs, reproject_obs, and flux_obs instead. See the Using merge_obs to combine observations and create exposure-corrected images thread for more information.

Deprecated: mkBgReg.pl and mkSubBgReg.pl

• The mkBgReg.pl and mkSubBgReg.pl scripts are deprecated and will be removed in a later release of CIAO. Please use the roi tool and the splitroi script since they are more powerful than the scripts they replace, as discussed in the An Image of Diffuse Emission thread.

---

Libraries

cxcparam

• The cxcparam python module has gained the plist function has been added to retrieve the list of all parameter names associated with a parameter file:

  >>> import paramio as pio
  >>> pio.plist("dmlist")
  ['infile', 'opt', 'outfile', 'rows', 'cells', 'verbose', 'mode']
  

stack

• The stack Python module has been completely re-written in CIAO 4.5. The new module is called stk and returns a native Python list of strings rather than an opaque wrapper around the underlying C structure.

  CIAO 4.5:

  >>> import stk
  >>> myfiles = stk.build("a1,b2[cols x,y],c3")
  >>> len(myfiles)
  3
  >>> myfiles[1]
  'b2[cols x,y]'
  >>> myfiles = stk.build("")
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  Exception: Empty stack string.
  

  CIAO 4.4:

  >>> import stack as stk
  >>> mystk = stk.stk_build("a1,b2[cols x,y],c3")
  >>> stk.stk_count(mystk)
  3
  >>> stk.stk_read_num(mystk, 2)
  'b2[cols x,y]'
  >>> mystk = stk.stk_build("")
  >>> stk.stk_count(mystk)
  1
  >>> stk.stk_read_num(mystk, 1)
  ''
  

  The new module returns a list of strings which is easier to iterate over using native Python controls. Note that building a stack from an empty string now raises an exception that may need to be dealt with differently than before.

caldb4-lib

• The following changes are not going to affect most users:

  • Reorganize the querying thread in the order of telescope/instrument/product and other general parameters, boundary condition parameters, start and stop date/time specification, data fidelity and data quality. The order conforms to new CALDB4 Requirements.
  • Rewrite the algorithm for extracting the largest start and smallest stop from the valid data set.
  • Modify handling of END_TIME NULL value (nullval=0.0) in key-config (internally re-assigned to nullval=999999.0).
  • Add checks of date/time formats and MJD to UTC conversions before starting any querying. Print out warnings of any inconsistency between the Indexed values and the run-time calculation.
  • Retain double precision of REF_TIME/END_TIME all the way to applications.
  • Add debug-level macros for consistent appearance of output messages.
  • Print out intermediate query results for diagnosis and understanding of the final output at high verbosity levels.
  • Make "bad" data returnable for "cal_qual=5" queries.
  • Fix the output message for "match=firstwarn" or "match=lastwarn".
  • Allow double oquted text in Index boundary condition parameters.

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Environment

Off-the-Shelf (OTS) Package Versions

• The following OTS packages are included with CIAO 4.5. For more information on how the OTS packages are built for use with CIAO, refer to the INSTALL_SOURCE file distributed with the software.

  Executables

  • ds9 v7.1

  Python

  • IPython v0.13 (this does not include the extra modules needed to take advantage of the interactive notebook capabilities of IPython, for instance IPython.parallel or IPython.zmq).
  • NumPy v1.5.1
  • pyds9 v1.3
  • Python v2.7.2

  Libraries

  • CCfits v2.4
  • cfitsio v3.290
  • fftw v3.3.1
  • fontconfig v2.8.0
  • freetype v2.4.4
  • gsl v1.15
  • readline v6.2
  • vte v0.25.1
  • VTK v5.6.1
  • wcssubs v3.8.3
  • xpa v2.1.13
  • XSpec v12_7_1 (models only)

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Documentation

Analysis Threads

• The CIAO and Sherpa Threads are in the process of being tested and updated for the CIAO 4.5 release. Please check the "Last Update" information at the top of each thread to see if it has been reviewed. The ChIPS Threads have been updated.

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