April 12 13, 2006

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HEASARC Scientific Software

• William Pence

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HEASOFTHEASOFT is the HEASARC's unified package
of FTOOLS and Xanadu scientific analysis software.

• FTOOLS contains 456 individual tasks in 20
  packages (estimated greater than 4 million lines
  of code)
• Older packages written mainly in Fortran
• Newer packages (Swift and Suzaku) are in C/C
  using more modern support libraries and build
  structures.
• Xanadu consists of 3 multi-mission analysis tools
• Xspec spectral analysis
• Ximage imaging analysis
• Xronos timing analysis

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Multi-mission Software Packages

• Attitude tasks (15 tasks)
• Calibration Database (33)
• Imaging tasks (28)
• General utilities futils and heatools (56 24)
• High Energy tasks (35)
• General time related tasks (11)
• Xronos tasks (15)
• Parameter file utilities (6)
• Total tasks 223

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Mission Specific Software Packages

• OSO8 (3)
• ROSAT (35)
• RXTE (66)
• Swift (51)
• Vela5B (5)
• Suzaku (not yet public)

• ASCA (40 tasks)
• CGRO (21)
• Einstein (2)
• Exosat (7)
• HEAO1 (3)

Total 233 tasks
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Xselect

• High-level interactive program to selectively
  clean and filter event files a bridge between
  FTOOLS and Xanadu
• Extracts images, light curves, and spectra
• Products can be analyzed by the Xanadu tasks
• Provides a uniform interface for all current and
  many archival X-ray astronomy missions
• Runs many individual FTOOLS tasks for the user
• also runs CIAO or SAS tools in some cases
• Mission-specific information is stored in an
  ASCII configuration file
• easy to add support for new missions and update
  existing missions.

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Calibration Database

• The CALDB system consists of
• a hierachical set of disk directories containing
  all the calibration files in FITS format
• a searchable index of the files
• software for users or software applications to
  query the database
• Typical query "Give me the name of the RMF
  calibration file that is appropriate for this
  particular observation, i.e., at this time and
  taken with this instrument configuration"
• The software task then opens and reads the file
• either at the HEASARC via FTP, or
• from a locally installed copy of the CALDB files
• This decouples the calibration information from
  the analysis software
• Calibration files can be updated without any
  modification to software

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Other Popular Individually Distributed Software

• Fv - FITS file viewer and editor (ds9
  compatible)
• CFITSIO C and Fortran programming interface for
  reading and writing FITS files
• Both have gt500 downloads per month.
• Used by researchers in all areas of astronomy and
  other sciences, as well as by a large number of
  amateurs.

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Next Software Release

• HEASOFT v6.1 will be released in June 2006
• Previous release was in April 2005
• Significant new general features include
• New general image calculator tasks
• Create a new image from arithmetic function of
  multiple input images, e.g., newimage (a.fits
  b.fits) / c.fits
• Can be used with region files to, e.g., create
  image masks around specified coordinates
• Can also apply mathematical filters to any input
  image in any task on the fly, e.g., fcopy
  in.fitspix sqrt(X) out.fits
• New 'join' task merges matching rows in 2 input
  FITS tables
• New coordinate converter task equatorial ltgt
  ecliptic ltgt galactic

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New HEASOFT Features (continued)

• New table selection and calculator functions
• angsep calculate angular separation between
  coordinates
• accum accumulative summation function
• The CALDB is more selective about flagging
  duplicate files
• Recognizes finer distinctions between
• Needed for Suzaku mission
• New Fv version
• calculates flux within specified regions
• support for new Hera features
• Updates to underlying support libraries
• cfitsio, ccfits pil, readline

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XRONOS XIMAGE Enhancements

• Xronos Planned changes
• To represent the GRB curves
• Adding the capability to bin by counts log in
  the lightcurve.
• Using the Bayesian statistic to work binning
  blocks
• Re-write the tasks using C to facilitate
• the binning addition
• the reading of the several input supported
  writing of the output
• portability and maintenance
• Building of the individual tasks incrementally
• First lightcurve task to be used with Swift (beta
  release maybe included with next HEAsoft release
  or soon after)
• Ximage changes (last and current release)
• Adding support for Swift and Suzaku (psf) and psf
  in general
• Include upper limit calculation using different
  algorithms
• Upgrade of the AST library (FITS world coordinate
  system library)
• Update of box rotation definition (for ds9
  compatibility)
• Several internal improvements

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Currently Supported Platforms (email
registrations since last release in April 2005)

• Cygwin PC (?)
• OSF (10)
• Linux Mac (3)
• Linux Dec Alpha (3)

• Linux PC (778)
• Linux 64bit (76)
• Mac Darwin (?)
• Solaris/SunOS (74)

• Total Registrations 944
• (email registration not available on Mac and
  Cygwin)

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Supported Platforms in Next Release

• Expect to add support for 64bit Linux PCs
• Port is nearly complete
• Main remaining issue is testing of individual
  tasks written in C which may not be fully 64-bit
  compliant
• Will Try to add support for new Intel-chip Mac
  computers
• Main issue is that the standard GNU g77
  compiler is not yet available (expect it will
  eventually)
• Attempting to use alternate g95 compiler, but
  there are complications with the C/Fortran
  interface, non-int loop vars.
• May drop public support for the least used
  platforms
• They remain useful for internal testing and
  require little extra effort to support.

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Xspec Update

• (see Keith Arnaud presentation)

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Introduction to Hera(Demonstration tomorrow
morning)

• Hera is a new experimental data analysis service
• It enables full data analysis over the Internet,
  including
• High speed access to all the HEASARC archival
  data
• Latest versions of the HEASOFT, CIAO, and XMM-SAS
  software packages
• Cluster of 6 fast Linux machines to run the
  software
• Large user disk area for intermediate file
  storage
• Users only need to install the small Fv program
• Acts as the client to the Hera servers at the
  HEASARC

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Hera Objectives

• To make data analysis easier and faster
• Users don't have to install and maintain the
  large software packages
• Users don't have to download large data sets to
  their local machine
• To make the data more accessible to new users
• The graphical user interface can guide novice
  users through the steps of the analysis
• Hera can be customized for specific purposes
• e.g., Provide lab exercises for high school and
  college students

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Hera User Interfaces

• Four distinctly different user interfaces to Hera
  are available
• Standard Hera the original GUI interface
  provides full interactive access to all features
• Separate windows for managing remote and local
  files
• Hierarchical listing of software packages and
  tools
• Browse can save selected data sets to a Hera
  account
• Files are saved can continue Hera analysis later
• Anonymous Hera a temporary Hera session that
  uses the same GUI as Standard Hera.
• Mainly used to immediately analyze a single data
  set selected in Browse
• Files are deleted at end of session

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Main Hera GUI
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Hera Interfaces (continued)

• Runtask Hera the newest batch interface to
  Hera for executing single tasks from a command
  line.
• Example gt fv -runtask fcopy infile.fits
  outfile.fits
• Especially useful if only a few tasks from a
  package need to be run, e.g. The XMM SAS rmfgen
  and arfgen tasks
• Plan to add ability to execute a sequence of
  commands (scripts)
• Could be used to write portable analysis scripts
  for users
• e.g. Distribute a CD containing data, Fv, and
  Hera analysis scripts
• Educational Hera developed with Jim Lochner
  to provide a simple analysis environment for
  student exercises.
• Has been used in community college and a high
  school class settings to teach basic
  (astro)physics concepts.
• The first 3 of these interfaces will be
  demonstrated tomorrow.