To find and download HEASARC data in the cloud, you can use astroquery.heasarc or download our new tool, hark.
The HEASARC and NuSTAR teams are greatly saddened by the sudden passing of Katja Pottschmidt. Most recently Katja was the lead scientist for the NuSTAR Guest Observer Facility (GOF), a role she had supported for many years. During her science career she worked on many other high energy astrophysics missions and played an integral role in advancing our knowledge of the universe. She was a wonderful colleague and friend and will be keenly missed by all who knew her.
Appendix E: Associated Programs
Introduction
The HEAsoft package provides a number of programs and subroutine libraries to manipulate the FITS files used by XSPEC. A description of most tasks can be obtained by typing fhelp taskname or to get a complete list fhelp ftools.
HEAsoft reading tasks
| ftlist | Prints the contents of a FITS file to the screen or to a file |
| ftdmprmf | Prints the contents of a FITS RMF file to the screen or to a file. This tool prints the RMF file in a more legible fashion than ftlist |
HEAsoft manipulation tasks
| fthedit | Changes the value of a keyword in a FITS extension header |
| ftgrouppha | Defines (or redefines) and/or displays the grouping and quality flags, the important keywords, and the fractional systematic errors. |
| ftrbnpha | Compresses a FITS PHA file to a user-defined number of channels. The output is a new file containing the revised PHA extension plus a direct copy of any other extensions in the original file. |
| mathpha | Performs arithmetical operations on PHA files. |
| ftcmppha | Convert a type II pha file to a type I pha file. |
| ftrbnrmf | Bins a FITS RMF file (the detector response matrix) in channel or energy space. |
| ftcmprmf | Compress an RMF by removing all response below a threshold value. |
| ftaddarf | Adds together ARFs. |
| ftaddrmf | Adds together RMFs. |
| ftmarfrmf | Multiplies an RMF file by an ARF file. |
| ftgenrsp | A generic spectral response generator. |
| fv | A general GUI for manipulating FITS files. |
HEAsoft subroutines
The heasp library in heacore/heasp is a C++ class library for manipulating all the filetypes used by XSPEC. This provides both C++ and C routines as well as a Python package. A complete description is available at: http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/lheasoft/headas/heasp/heasp_guide.html