# Presentation: 138338

## HEASARC Scientific Software

- William Pence

## HEASOFTHEASOFT 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

## 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

## Mission Specific Software Packages

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

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

- Total = 233 tasks

## 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.

## 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

## 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 >500 downloads per month.
- Used by researchers in all areas of astronomy and other sciences, as well as by a large number of amateurs.

## 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.fits[pix sqrt(X)]  out.fits**
- New  'join' task merges matching rows in 2 input FITS tables
- New coordinate converter task: equatorial <> ecliptic <> galactic

## 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

## 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

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

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

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

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

## 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.

## Xspec Update

- (see Keith Arnaud presentation)

## 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

## 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

## 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

## Main Hera GUI

## Hera Interfaces (continued)

- “Runtask” Hera – the newest “batch” interface to Hera for executing single tasks from a command line.
- Example:** > 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.