The niextract-events task does basic NICER event filtering. It could be considered a stripped down version of 'extractor' which does only event filtering (no images, spectra or light curves), but it does it many times faster.
niextract-events can perform temporal or spatial filtering using good time interval files (GTIs) and/or spatial region files, respectively. Also, basic column filtering by command-line interval ranges are supported as in 'extractor'.
niextract-events does not accept all the parameters of extractor (in particular, not the spectrum, light curve, or image parameters), but the event filtering parameters are accepted, and have the same names.
Time filtering is performed by using GTIs. The GTIs from all the input 'timefile's (if any) are ORed together; the GTIs from all the input event files are ORed together; and then finally, these two sets are ANDed together to form the master time filter.
NICER's event data comes from 52 operating flight detectors. In order to manage the exposure information of each detector, a system called FPM Selection information has been devised and can be attached to a NICER event file. This information is stored in the extension FPM_SEL, as well as various GTI_* extensions that describe the exposures of individual modules.
This task does not allow selecting or de-selecting individual detector modules. Use nifpmsel for such selections. Instead, niextract-events is best suited for temporal filtering, as well as interval filtering as described below.
niextract-events properly handles combining files with FPM Selection information. It will examine the exposure information of each indvidual module and create new FPM Selection information in the output file. Note that this really only makes sense when gtimerge=OR, i.e. the combination of event files from different time ranges.
The processing of FPM selection information is enabled by setting fpmsel=YES, which is the default. However, if one or more of the input files is missing FPM Selection information, output FPM Selection cannot be created and its output is disabled. This is not considered an error, since files that pre-date the FPM Selection system may not have this information. A warning message is printed in this case. To disable the warning message, set fpmsel=NO. Also, if the intent is to merge event files from the same time interval with gtimerge=AND, it is recommended to set fpmsel=NO since FPM Selection doesn't make sense in this case.
nextract-events understands standard extractor interval filters, as well as custom filtering selections.
Interval filters can be specified by appending them inside [] on the end of the infile parameter. This should be a comma separated list of the form COLUMN=n or COLUMN=n:m to specify that column must equal n, or be in the range n to m, respectively. For instance, to accept only events with PHA lying between 7 and 30 the filename will be specified by "infile.evt[pha=7:30]".
Note that since square brackets are typically interpreted by Unix shells as wild card pattern matches, users will be required to enclose interval screening filters typed on the command line with quotation marks. So, for example,
niextract-events "infile.evt[pha=7:30]" output.evt ...the quotation marks prevents the unix command line from interpreting the special characters.
If a list of filenames is given (using "@") then the interval filtering should be specified on the input paramater, not on the individual event filenames. Successive interval filters should be separated by spaces or commas, such as infile.evt[pha=7:30,EVENT_FLAGS=bx11000]. Interval filters must correspond to a column name in the input event file.
niextract-events also accepts filters not possible with extractor. You can use simple arithmetic expressions for comparison such as < and >. For example to screen on PI_RATIO, use "PI_RATIO≥1.4".
Common interval filters to apply are:
niextract-events does several filtering steps. Using the standard on-the-fly CFITSIO filtering capability, the process could in principle use a large amount of memory. niextract-events therefore has memory-related optmizations.
If the input file size exceeds "minselectmb" megabytes (where "minselectmb" is a task parameter), then niextract-events uses an alternate filtering approach that conserves RAM memory but does use more disk space. Users should be prepared for run to use at least double the storage size of the inputs. For most use cases, the analyst should not need to change minselectmb from its default.
However, it should be pointed out that some processing may still require a large amount of memory. This may be unavoidable if the "colexpr" parameter is used.
1. Perform filtering on theevent files listed in the ASCI file infile.lis. The temporal filters listed in the GTI file select.gti, and the spatial filters listed in the region file select.reg are applied. The output is sent to output.evt.
niextract-events @infile.lis output.evt timefile=select.gti regionfile=select.reg
extractor
nifpmsel - Add or update FPM Selection information