NuSTAR General Utilities

|Readthedocs| |Astropy|

Repository NuSTAR python tools

Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope ARray

.. image:: https://www.nustar.caltech.edu/system/avm_image_sqls/binaries/26/page/nustar_artistconcept_2.jpg?1393022433 :target: http://www.nustar.caltech.edu :alt: NuSTAR

Rationale and Scope

This distribution is a set of python classes and wrapper scripts intended to make analysis of NuSTAR data more convenient for the user. Underneath all of this code is the NuSTAR Data Analysis Software (NuSTARDAS) <https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/nustar/analysis/>_ maintained at the HEASARC by the NuSTAR and ASDC software development teams. The code in this repo provides NuSTAR-specific, "user friedly" tools to allow scripting of the underlying NuSTARDAS routines. We've provided a number of jupyter notebooks for common tasks. There are also several "non-common" analysis tasks (like analyzing stray light or performing diagnostic test to see if an observation is affected by solar flares) that also have examples here.

Wherever possible, we've used standard astropy formalism. Though we do note that this repo has been under development for a number of years now. This code is maintained by just a few individuals, so going back and updating existing (working) code sometimes lag changes introduced in astropy.

We hope you find these tools useful! At some point we will get around to putting the code somewhere that it citeable, but that has not happened yet. So if you do use these tools, please simply acknowledge their use in your papers.

Installation

We require at least python 3.7 for this installation as well as the other dependencies listed in requirements.txt.

We recommend installing nustar-gen-utils in its own conda environment. To do this, do the following:

.. code-block:: bash

conda create --name nustar python

Now activate the nustar environment:

.. code-block:: bash

conda activate nustar

Add the conda-forge channel and then install the requirements:

.. code-block:: bash

conda config --add channels conda-forge 
conda config --set channel_priority strict

Move to your working directory (example: $HOME/github) and pull down the latest version of the repo:

.. code-block:: bash

cd $HOME/github
git clone https://github.com/NuSTAR/nustar-gen-utils.git

...which will create a nustar-gen-utils directory. To install the repository:

.. code-block:: bash

cd nustar-gen-utils
conda install --yes --file requirements.txt

In the current version, a development installation is recommended. Install this using pip:

.. code-block:: bash

pip install -e .

To check that the nustar-gen-utils has install successfully, start an ipython shell and do

.. code-block:: python

import nustar_gen 

...if the library imports fine then everything worked.

Documentation

We recommend just referencing the latest readthedocs: |Readthedocs|

Contributing

We love contributions! nustar-gen-utils is open source, built on open source, and we'd love to have you hang out in our community.

If you'd like to say hello, drop onto the NuSTAR Slack channel from the NuSTAR Observer's page <https://www.nustar.caltech.edu/page/observers>_ .

**Imposter syndrome disclaimer**: We want your help. No, really.

There may be a little voice inside your head that is telling you that you're not ready to be an open source contributor; that your skills aren't nearly good enough to contribute. What could you possibly offer a project like this one?

We assure you - the little voice in your head is wrong. If you can write code at all, you can contribute code to open source. Contributing to open source projects is a fantastic way to advance one's coding skills. Writing perfect code isn't the measure of a good developer (that would disqualify all of us!); it's trying to create something, making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes. That's how we all improve, and we are happy to help others learn.

Being an open source contributor doesn't just mean writing code, either. You can help out by writing documentation, tests, or even giving feedback about the project (and yes - that includes giving feedback about the contribution process). Some of these contributions may be the most valuable to the project as a whole, because you're coming to the project with fresh eyes, so you can see the errors and assumptions that seasoned contributors have glossed over.

Note: This disclaimer was originally written by Adrienne Lowe <https://github.com/adriennefriend> for a PyCon talk <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uj746j9Heo> , and was adapted by nustar-gen-util based on its use in the README file for the MetPy project <https://github.com/Unidata/MetPy>_.

.. |Readthedocs| image:: https://img.shields.io/badge/docs-latest-brightgreen.svg?style=flat :target: https://nustar-gen-utils.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

.. |Astropy| image:: http://img.shields.io/badge/powered%20by-AstroPy-orange.svg?style=flat :target: http://www.astropy.org :alt: Powered by Astropy Badge