Introduction

PIMMS (Portable, Interactive, Multi-Mission Simulator) is intended as a versatile simulation tool for X-ray astronomers.

PIMMS uses one command GO for actual execution, while other commands are mostly used for setting up various parameters. This approach allows users to repeat similar calculations using a slightly different parameter.

PIMMS uses the following terms:

• Model: spectral model to be used. PIMMS contains a small set of simple spectral models, and others can be imported.
  • However, spectral simulation is not a strength of PIMMS - it does not output spectra as such, and it is unlikely that PIMMS can keep up with the multitude of models that are used for various types of objects. We recommend the use of XSPEC for a full spectral simulation.
• Instrument: in addition to the instrument for which simulation is to be done, you can also specify the input instrument for count rate calculations. This is used for calculating normalization of the model; rather than starting from the source flux in cgs unit, PIMMS can start from e.g., Einstein IPC count rate.

This file was last modified on Tuesday, 13-Sep-2005 16:04:36 EDT