NAME

sqaplot -- SIS quick analysis ftool.

USAGE

sqaplot infile device

DESCRIPTION

Produce quick plot of image, pha spectrum, light curve and diagnostic information for SIS science files.

PARAMETERS

infile [file name]

The name of the science input file. Currently only Faint and Bright mode data are supported.

device [string]

The name of a PGPLOT device name (e.g., /xw for xwindow, /xt for xterm, /ps for PostScript, or /null to skip the plot altogether).

(outfile) [file name]

The name of the file in which to place some commentary on the infile. This file includes ascii listings of the PHA Spectrum, Light Curve and Flickering Pixel Distribution. Special cases are "STDOUT", which produces an abbreviated commentary to the standard output, "NONE", " ", or "/dev/null" which skip it altogether, and DEFAULT, which will generate a file name from the input file name, replacing the ".fits" extension with ".evt". Note that the current version doesn't copy the GTI extension to this new events file, nor does it use or modify the GTI information from the input science file.

(eventfile) [file name]

The name of a file in which to copy valid events, i.e., events which are not considered to be flickering pixels, which are not from telemetry saturated frames, and with grades less than maxgrade. In the case of Faint science files, grading and ph summation will have been performed. Thus, sqaplot with plotting device /null can be used to filter event files.

(flicker) [string]

A comma-delimited list of flickering pixel thresholds for each of the four SIS chips: only pixels with less than this number of events will be included in the various plots. The default, "0,0,0,0" invites the program to make its own estimate of an appropriate choice per chip.

(range) [real]

Pixels with this fraction of the maximum number of counts will receive the foreground color in the SIS image plot. Typically, this should be less than one, since most pixels have few counts.

(contours) [int]

This gives the number of contours to apply to a smoothed version of the image histogram. Unless there are a large number of counts, it's probably best to stick with the default, 0, meaning no contours.

(smooth) [int]

This sets the number of times the image is smoothed before contouring. Obviously, this is only needed if the image is to be contoured.

(split) [int]

Split threshold to be applied when grading Faint mode events.

(echos) [string]

A comma-delimited list of echo corrections to apply for each instrument.

(style) [int]

The number of pixels to be echo-corrected; typically one.

(maxgrade) [int]

The maximum grade of interest. For this Quick Analysis application, only events exceeding this grade are discarded.

(telemetry) [boolean]

Determines whether events from saturated telemetry frames are to be discarded. Typically, if the telemetry frame is holding near the maximum possible number of events, most are background, light leak, or flickering pixel events.

(maxcounts) [int]

If the above telemetry saturation flag is in effect, a maximum counts per second threshold can be imposed to further restrict the number of allowed events beyond what is allowed from telemetry considerations.

(pichip) [real]

Controls PHA to PI processing of events. If this value is set to a valid instrument.chip combination (0.0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3) then the plotted (and outfile) spectra will have been converted to a PI scale corresponding to that chip. Otherwise (1.4) the actual ADU values will be used in the plots and output. Note that the PI scale is merely a useful heuristic, and not well calibrated.

(phtopi) [string]

Name of calibration file containing PH to PI transformation information. If the file exists, this will supersede the effect of the pichip parameter.

(echohist) [string]

Name of calibration file containing the secular echo corrections. If the file exists, it supersedes the effect of the echos parameter.

(rawdisplay) [boolean]

Controls the orientation of the image corresponding to raw ccd coordinates (i.e. looking down on the detector) or detector coordinates (i.e. looking through the detector at the sky) for "yes" and "no", respectively. In either case, the plot is constructed from the RAWX and RAWY addresses in the science file.

(mode) [string]

The usual.

EXAMPLES

     
       sqaplot ft930329_1109_1109S100101M.fits /xw
       sqaplot ft930329_1109_1109S100101M.fits /ps range=0.2
       sqaplot ft930329_1109_1109S100101M.fits /null flicker="3,3,3,3" \
             outfile=DEFAULT eventfile=DEFAULT
     

will successively produce an Xwindow summary of the data in this file, a PostScript file (with the grayscale tweaked) suitable for printing on a grayscale device, and event and output files ft930329_1109_1109S100101M.evt and ft930329_1109_1109S100101M.out with a restrictive flickering pixel threshold of 3 applied to each chip.

BUGS

Under development; contact Geoffrey Crew (gbc@space.mit.edu) for details. For some purposes it may be useful to run the program several times to get the flickering thresholds and image parameters correct. In particular, if the flickering pixel distribution is atypical, all bets are off for the automatic selection of thresholds.

SEE ALSO

gqaplot

CATEGORY