Chandra Announcement: Version 4.12.2 of the Contributed Scripts and Modules package

[Tara Gokas]

Version 4.12.2 of the Contributed Scripts and Modules package is available

Version 4.12.2 of the Contributed Scripts and Modules package has been released (April 8, 2020). CIAO 4.12  users are strongly encouraged to update to this version of the contributed scripts (upgrade instructions are included below).

The release includes several updates, primarily to address changes introduced in the DS 10.8.3 update, which is the underlying software running the standard processing pipeline on new observations, and in anticipation of the start of Repro V of the Chandra archive.

The main change in DS 10.8.3, released on 2020 March 24, has changed how the aspect solution files for an observation are created, with the CONTENT keyword for the new asol file is ASPSOLOBI rather than ASPSOL found in prior versions.  DS 10.8.3 also now creates ARF and RMF files for grating observations.

Version 4.12.2 highlights include: 

• chandra_repro, apply_fov_limits, fluximage, flux_obs, merge_obs, and srcflux supports the new CONTENT keyword value.

• chandra_repro and srcflux also take advantage of the skyfov's method=convexhull algorithm with the new type of aspect solution, so the FOV file created is a tighter fitting polygon around each CCD.

• The download_chandra_obsid and download_obsid_caldb scripts have been updated to provide data access via HTTPS rather than FTP; the former has been also updated to support gARF and gRMF downloads.  

• This update is also needed to download observations due to changes in the archive.  Users unable to upgrade can workaround the archive error by specifying the file types to download, e.g.

% download_chandra_obsid 652 evt1,evt2,asol,bpix,stat,mtl,msk,bias,pbk,flt,fov

• tgsplit, combine_spectra, dax, simulate_psf, and  correct_periscope_drift have minor bug fixes.

More details of the changes can be found in the $ASCDS_CONTRIB/Changes.CIAO_scripts file and at the "Scripts Package: Version History" page.

What version of the contributed package do I have installed?

         The following command gives the installed version of the contributed package and the method of the CIAO installation:

             % ciaover -v | grep -i contrib

         For CIAO installations made with ciao-install the output will look like:

              Contrib     : Package release 1  Friday, November 22, 2019

        For conda installations the output will look like

         ciao-contrib              4.12.1                     py_0    https://cxc.cfa.harvard.edu/conda/ciao

How do I upgrade (or install) the package?

         

         For CIAO installed with the ciao-install script, the contributed package can be upgraded with the same script: please see http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/download/

         Users of the conda installation of CIAO 4.12 can update the contributed scripts package  by running:

       % conda update -n <env> -c https://cxc.cfa.harvard.edu/conda/ciao ciao-contrib

        where <env> is the name of the conda environment where CIAO is installed.  The enumerated version of the conda distribution of this update is 4.12.1.