Posts tagged ‘ciao’

Everybody needs crampons

Sherpa is a fitting environment in which Chandra data (and really, X-ray data from any observatory) can be analyzed. It has just undergone a major update and now runs on python. Or allows python to run. Something like that. It is a very powerful tool, but I can never remember how to use it, and I have an amazing knack for not finding what I need in the documentation. So here is a little cheat sheet (which I will keep updating as and when if I learn more): Continue reading ‘Everybody needs crampons’ »

data analysis system and its documentation

So far, I didn’t complain much related to my “statistician learning astronomy” experience. Instead, I’ve been trying to emphasize how fascinating it is. I hope that more statisticians can join this adventure when statisticians’ insights are on demand more than ever. However, this positivity seems not working so far. In two years of this slog’s life, there’s no posting by a statistician, except one about BEHR. Statisticians are busy and well distracted by other fields with more tangible data sets. Or compared to other fields, too many obstacles and too high barriers exist in astronomy for statisticians to participate. I’d like to talk about these challenges from my ends.[1] Continue reading ‘data analysis system and its documentation’ »

  1. This is quite an overdue posting. Links and associated content can be outdated.[]

Where is ciao X ?

X={ primer, tutorial, cookbook, Introduction, guidebook, 101, for dummies, …}

I’ve heard many times about the lack of documentation of this extensive data analysis system, ciao. I saw people still using ciao 3.4 although the new version 4 has been available for many months. Although ciao is not the only tool for Chandra data analysis, it was specifically designed for it. Therefore, I expect it being used frequently with popularity. But the reality is against my expectation. Whatever (fierce) discussion I’ve heard, it has been irrelevant to me because ciao is not intended for statistical analysis. Then, out of sudden, after many months, a realization hit me. ciao is different from other data analysis systems and softwares. This difference has been a hampering factor of introducing ciao outside the Chandra scientist community and of gaining popularity. This difference was the reason I often got lost in finding suitable documentations. Continue reading ‘Where is ciao X ?’ »

It bothers me.

The full description is given http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao3.4/ahelp/bayes.html about “bayes” under sherpa/ciao[1]. Some sentences kept bothering me and here’s my account for the reason given outside of quotes. Continue reading ‘It bothers me.’ »

  1. Note that the current sherpa is beta under ciao 4.0 not under ciao 3.4 and a description about “bayes” from the most recent sherpa is not available yet, which means this post needs updates one new release is available[]

Mexican Hat [EotW]

The most widely used tool for detecting sources in X-ray images, especially Chandra data, is the wavelet-based wavdetect, which uses the Mexican Hat (MH) wavelet. Now, the MH is not a very popular choice among wavelet aficianados because it does not form an orthonormal basis set (i.e., scale information is not well separated), and does not have compact support (i.e., the function extends to inifinity). So why is it used here?
Continue reading ‘Mexican Hat [EotW]’ »

Background Subtraction [EotW]

There is a lesson that statisticians, especially of the Bayesian persuasion, have been hammering into our skulls for ages: do not subtract background. Nevertheless, old habits die hard, and old codes die harder. Such is the case with X-ray aperture photometry. Continue reading ‘Background Subtraction [EotW]’ »

The power of wavdetect

wavdetect is a wavelet-based source detection algorithm that is in wide use in X-ray data analysis, in particular to find sources in Chandra images. It came out of the Chicago “Beta Site” of the AXAF Science Center (what CXC used to be called before launch). Despite the fancy name, and the complicated mathematics and the devilish details, it is really not much more than a generalization of earlier local cell detect, where a local background is estimated around a putative source and the question is asked, is whatever signal that is being seen in this pixel significantly higher than expected? However, unlike previous methods that used a flux measurement as the criterion for detection (e.g., using signal-to-noise ratios as proxy for significance threshold), it tests the hypothesis that the observed signal can be obtained as a fluctuation from the background. Continue reading ‘The power of wavdetect’ »