Bibcode
Conroy, M. A.; Garcia, M. R.; Mandel, E. G.; Roll, J.; Worrall, D. M.
Bibliographical reference
Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems I, A.S.P. Conference Series, Vol. 25, 1992, Diana M. Worrall, Chris Biemesderfer, and Jeannette Barnes, eds., p. 17.
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1992
Citations
2
Refereed citations
1
Description
X-ray data from the ROSAT satellite will be distributed to Guest
Observers on FITS tapes. The precise contents and format of the tape
were chosen bearing the following issues in mind: 1. The primary data
component for an X-ray observation is a list of photon events, and the
user requires additional data for selection and analysis of the primary
data. The introduction of the FITS bintable extension has provided a
standard format that makes the storage of photon events plausible and
efficient. 2. The photon events have associated properties, such as
position, time, energy, quality, but the precise list of properties is
experiment-dependent. This issue has been addressed by defining minimum
elements for each record type, but allowing self-defining record
extensions, specific to individual projects. 3. Filtering and selection
of photons will be a user's first step in the scientific analysis of the
data. This issue has been addressed by the inclusion of multiple filters
to permit the storage of all photon events, while providing a simple
mechanism for extracting a nominal subset that includes only good
events. These solutions in defining the contents and formats of the FITS
files should be useful for other event-based data sets.