Preparations for ACIS data analysis

We assume throughout that you are working on a UNIX system with the following software installed: C, Perl, FTOOLS, CIAO, SAOimage/ds9, IDL and TARA. TARA, or Tools for ACIS Real-time Analysis, may be the least familiar to non-ACIS-experts. It is a large suite of interactive tools within IDL developed principally by Pat Broos at Penn State. Originally designed to support ACIS instrument development and calibration, it has proved to be very effective for science analysis as well. The IDL source code can be freely downloaded, and it is accompanied by a Users' Guide.

Obtain the CIAO parameter file(s) of interest, edit it to your liking, and place in a directory called PFILES under your home directory. A convenient procedure is to copy the entire directory of CIAO parameter files (/bulk/pkg/asc/ascds/CXCDS_ROOT_SOLARIS/param) into ~/PFILES.

Note 1: CIAO documentation at Penn State is available in the Astronomy Reading Room, 530 Davey Lab. Please sign the sheet if you take a volume. On-line documentation is available from CXC -- a helpful place to start is on the CIAO Science Threads page.

Note 2: Documentation on CIAO, FTOOLS and other useful software installed locally at Penn State is available here . Additional software includes non-X-ray data processing systems (e.g. IRAF), mathematical and statistical packages, image manipulation programs, document production programs, and so forth.

The CIAO system requires that the user insert two observation-specific filenames -- the quantum uniformity (QEU) file and bad pixel list -- into the ardlib.par parameter file (see the ardlib.par Science Thread). At PSU the calibration database directory is /bulk/pkg/asc/caldb/. Be aware that at least one epoch of QEU files have produced crazy exposure maps (CXC Helpdesk ticket #3545) for at least one OBSID. LOOK AT YOUR EXPOSURE MAPS WITH DS9!

The CIAO system also requires that the user customize the pix_sim_table_flight.par parameter file to match the observation (see the pixlib.par Science Thread). At PSU the various versions of this parameter file are found in /bulk/pkg/asc/ascds/CXCDS_ROOT_SOLARIS/param/.

Note 3: If you are simultaneously reducing more than one observation, you may need to maintain multiple sets of ardlib.par and pix_sim_table_flight.par files, and establish a mechanism or procedure for ensuring that CIAO uses the correct set of files for each observation.

Place the following lines in your .cshrc file to use FTOOLS at Penn State: