Multi-mission x-ray analysis software system
Version : 2.5.1
Author(s) : (rsdc@cfa.harvard.edu)
License : AURA
Website : http://hea-www.harvard.edu/PROS/pros.html
Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Win32/Cygwin cd 2
Disk space required for installation is 41.44 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf
The following printable documents will be installed :
The analysis of x-ray data differs from that of other wavelengths due to the nature of x-ray data. The scarcity of data, the low signal-to-noise ratio and the large gaps in exposure time make data screening and masking an important part of the analysis process.
The PROS software includes spatial, spectral, timing, data I/O and conversion routines, plotting applications, and general algorithms for performing arithmetic operations with imaging data.
A more complete description of PROS can be found in the PROS User's GUIDE (PUG).
How PROS is organized
Programs in PROS are called tasks. Tasks are grouped by function into packages. The major packages in PROS include:
xdataio - Tasks to convert data to/from FITS format xplot - Plotting routines for XRAY data ximages - Additions to IRAF images package xspatial - X-ray spatial analysis package xspectral - X-ray spectral analysis package xtiming - X-ray timing analysis package
A diagram of the current package organization is available.
Brief Overview of PROS analysis tasks
tv display Tasks display and xdisplay will produce a TV display of the data.
sky grids The imcontour task calculates and graphs the iso-intensity areas of the images and displays them on a skygrid.
coordinates Support for the World Coordinate System (WCS) is provided in all the IRAF and PROS tasks. PROS provides additional interfaces to facilitate conversions, including an interactive mode from the image display.
graphics All non-image output data files from PROS analysis are produced in TABLE format which can be graphed either with the TABLES sgraph task or with the Interactive Graphics Interpreter (igi).
source detection The detect package is designed to perform Maximum Likelihood Source detection on data exhibiting Poisson statistics. It uses a signal-to-noise threshold calculation.
PRF modeling The imcalc, immodel and imsmooth tasks provide the ability to generate complex Point Response Function model images that can be convolved with observations.
data extraction The imcnts task is a utilitarian tool used to extract background subtracted counts from complex regions.
timing corrections The timcor package provides the conversions from spacecraft clock to UTC and calculation of the barycenter timing correction.
periodic analysis The tasks ltcurv and fft provide general capabilities to examine periodic data. The period and fold tasks include a provision for a decaying period. The qpphase task generates a QPOE files with an additional event attribute, phase, that then allows the data to be split according to phase.
spectrum extraction The qpspec task allows users to extract a background corrected spectrum from a QPOE file for use in PROS or for export to other analysis systems.
model specification and fitting PROS has a flexible spectral model specification language which allows multi-component model fitting. Also, the fit task allows fitting of multiple data sets.
flux conversion Fluxes for any object can be calculated from the xflux task.