NAME
niextlc - extract standard NICER light curve from event file
USAGE
niextlc infile outfile
DESCRIPTION
The niextlc task extracts a standard NICER light curve from
a NICER event file. It reproduces the steps that can be
performed within XSELECT using
extract curve
but programmatically from the command line.
The input is a NICER event file. Additionally the user can specify
a timefile (i.e. GTI file) for further temporal filtering.
PARAMETERS
- infile [filename]
- NICER input event file. It is allowed to specify a list of event
files using the @filenames.lis style of input.
- outfile [filename]
- Name of output light curve file.
- timebin=30.0 [real]
- Time bin size, in seconds.
- (timefile = "NONE") [string]
- The name of a temporal good time interval file, or NONE for no
temporal filtering. Note that the extension name is specified separately
using the 'gti' parameter.
- (pirange="30:800") [string]
- Range of PI values to consider, in the form "start:stop" where the
bin numbers are inclusive. Either low:high or low-high notation is
allowed.
- (lcthresh=0.1) [real]
- Fractional exposure to consider for each light curve bin. A value
of 1.0 indicates to require every output bin have full exposure, where
the default of 0.1 indicates that every output bin have at least 10%
of full exposure. Rate values are computed using the correct exposure
regardless of the value of lcthresh. This setting merely decides
which potential time bins are excluded due to fractional exposure less
than the lcthresh threshold.
- (filters="NONE") [string]
- A comma-separated list of extractor interval filters to
be additionally applied to the data. Please see the
help for extractor
for more information.
- (gti = "GTI") [string]
-
The name of the GTI extension in the input event files, which is "GTI"
for NICER.
- (events = "EVENTS") [string]
-
The name of the EVENTS extension in the input files.
- (ecol = "PI") [string]
-
The name of the column used for the pulse height of the event,
typically PI but possibly PHA.
- (tcol = "TIME") [string]
-
The name of the column used for the time of the event.
- (cleanup="YES") [boolean]
- If yes, then clean up temporary files. If no, temporary files
remain. This is typically for debugging.
- (clobber = NO) [boolean]
-
If the output file already exists, then setting "clobber = yes" will cause it to be overwritten.
- (chatter = 2) [integer, 0 - 5]
-
Controls the amount of informative text written to standard output.
Setting chatter = 4 or higher will produce detailed diagnostic output;
chatter = 1 prints out a basic diagnostic message. The default is to
produce a brief summary on output.
- (history = YES) [boolean]
-
If history = YES, then a set of HISTORY keywords will be written to
the header of the specified HDU in the output file to record the value
of all the niextlc task parameters that were used to produce the output
file.
EXAMPLES
Run niextlc for myfile.evt and place the output in mycurve.lc.
The time bin size is 60 seconds and the channel range is
50-200 PI bins (or 0.5-2.0 keV).
niextlc myfile.evt mycurve.lc 60.0 pirange=50:200
SEE ALSO
niextspect
nicerl2
extractor
LAST MODIFIED
Jul 2022