niextlc HEADAS help file

NAME

niextlc - extract standard NICER light curve from event file

USAGE

niextlc infile outfile

DESCRIPTION

The niextlc task extracts a standard NICER light curve from a NICER event file. It reproduces the steps that can be performed within XSELECT using


extract curve

but programmatically from the command line.

The input is a NICER event file. Additionally the user can specify a timefile (i.e. GTI file) for further temporal filtering.

PARAMETERS

infile [filename]: NICER input event file. It is allowed to specify a list of event files using the @filenames.lis style of input.
outfile [filename]: Name of output light curve file.
timebin=30.0 [real]: Time bin size, in seconds.
(timefile = "NONE") [string]: The name of a temporal good time interval file, or NONE for no temporal filtering. Note that the extension name is specified separately using the 'gti' parameter.
(pirange="30:800") [string]: Range of PI values to consider, in the form "start:stop" where the bin numbers are inclusive. Either low:high or low-high notation is allowed.
(lcthresh=0.1) [real]: Fractional exposure to consider for each light curve bin. A value of 1.0 indicates to require every output bin have full exposure, where the default of 0.1 indicates that every output bin have at least 10% of full exposure. Rate values are computed using the correct exposure regardless of the value of lcthresh.
(filters="NONE") [string]: A comma-separated list of extractor interval filters to be additionally applied to the data. Please see the help for extractor for more information.
(gti = "GTI") [string]: The name of the GTI extension in the input event files, which is "GTI" for NICER.
(events = "EVENTS") [string]: The name of the EVENTS extension in the input files.
(ecol = "PI") [string]: The name of the column used for the pulse height of the event, typically PI but possibly PHA.
(tcol = "TIME") [string]: The name of the column used for the time of the event.
(cleanup="YES") [boolean]: If yes, then clean up temporary files. If no, temporary files remain. This is typically for debugging.
(clobber = NO) [boolean]: If the output file already exists, then setting "clobber = yes" will cause it to be overwritten.
(chatter = 2) [integer, 0 - 5]: Controls the amount of informative text written to standard output. Setting chatter = 4 or higher will produce detailed diagnostic output; chatter = 1 prints out a basic diagnostic message. The default is to produce a brief summary on output.
(history = YES) [boolean]: If history = YES, then a set of HISTORY keywords will be written to the header of the specified HDU in the output file to record the value of all the niextlc task parameters that were used to produce the output file.

EXAMPLES

Run niextlc for myfile.evt and place the output in mycurve.lc. The time bin size is 60 seconds and the channel range is 50-200 PI bins (or 0.5-2.0 keV).


   niextlc myfile.evt mycurve.lc 60.0 pirange=50:200

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