Chandra Announcement: Release of the Sherpa 4.17.0 package for Python

[Tara Gokas]

Release of the Sherpa 4.17.0 package for Python

The Sherpa 4.17.0 package for Python for general usage outside CIAO was released on October 9, 2024. 

This release of Sherpa includes enhancements, documentation changes, infrastructure changes, and bug fixes. Highlights include:

• enhancements:

• add calc_model and calc_source functions to return an evaluated model/source array

• added wstat to plot_pvalue for the likelihood ratio test

• changed XSpec interface to use FunctionUtility C++ API instead of XSFortran API

• improved support for PHA data starting at channel  0 and handling of STAT_ERR and SYS_ERR PHA columns which are set to 0

• improved guess for complex models

• improve filtering handling

• several updates to enhance plotting capabilities and layout

• documentation changes:

• added paper citations to front page of Sherpa Read the Docs documentation

• cleaned up various typos and URL references

• added many examples, e.g. use of set_x/y_label

• infrastructure and testing:

• improved test coverage

• many updates to CI 

• drop support for Python 3.9 and numpy <1.24

• initial/experimental support for Python 3.12

• bug fixes: 

• fixed an issue with plotting 1D data with asymmetric errs after filter ( #2090)

• Include the default identifier in save_all output if it has been changed (#2077)

For detailed Release Notes go to https://github.com/sherpa/sherpa/releases/tag/4.17.0

For documentation and installation instructions go to https://sherpa.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Information on recent releases and citation information is available using the Digital Object

Identifier (DOI) https://zenodo.org/records/13909532