This page lists noteworthy items and issues about the Sherpa 4.2 release. For the full list of known issues please review the:

• Sherpa bug list
• Sherpa Frequently Asked Questions page

---

Running Sherpa

IPython Packaged with CIAO OTS

CIAO includes IPython in the CIAO OTS directory which is used by Sherpa and ChIPS to provide command-line user interfaces. These programs create an IPython profile in the directory $HOME/.ipython-ciao.

If IPython users want any personal customizations to be available when running CIAO, they will have to copy them from $HOME/.ipython to $HOME/.ipython-ciao.

User Python modules must not have the same name as CIAO/Sherpa modules.

When loading a module in Python, Python first looks in the current working directory for this module, then in the directories listed in the PYTHONPATH environment variable. Therefore, if you have a script named 'sherpa.py' in your current working directory, for example, Sherpa will fail to load because the script ./sherpa.py is loaded, not the code in the module ${ASCDS_INSTALL}/lib/python2.5/site-packages/sherpa. Please ensure that the names of your Python scripts do not exactly match those of Python modules packaged with CIAO.

---

Data Caveats

Spectral analyses of ACIS data with a limited pulse-height range

Before fitting ACIS data sets with restricted pulse-height ranges, please read the CIAO caveat "Spectral analyses of ACIS data with a limited pulse-height range."

A complete list of caveats for Chandra data is available on the CIAO Data Caveats webpage.