Response-tools Code 🦊

Contents:

• Response-tools code tips
• response_tools

The response-tools Github repository developed for the FOXSI-4 sounding rocket mission can be found here. This page contains the automated documentation for the response-tools Python package.

The code is written in Python and is relatively bare-bones. There are two things that have been made use of that the user might want to know:

1. Values and functions in the code have been made to be unit aware where possible.

• When it comes to response elements, the biggest annoyance is units and keeping track of them. The code makes use of Astropy Units to help the user track what they’re working with and to avoid making mistakes.

2. Functions return custom data-class objects, not just tuples of values or arrays.

• To find out what fields are stored in the data-class, all you have to do is either print the returned object, inspect object.contents, or run the method object.print_contents. (Note for IDL users: Using these objects is similar to using an IDL structure.)

• The data-class object the functions returned can be accessed by either indexing with the field name à la [“field_name”] or doing .field_name on the returned object.

Remember, with any function you can always run help(function_name) and this should let you inspect the documentation written for that function and should explain what the function is, how to use it, and what it returns.

Thank you for considering to use the codebase. If you enjoy (or hate) using the code please consider helping the project via Pull Requests and Issues.

API level design

The Python code is designed to have three API levels:

• Level 3 (recommended use): Full telescope loaders for the FOXSI(-4) instrument. These are designed to return the ancillary response function (ARF) and redistribution matrix function (RMF) composed of all the relevant telescope components.

  • These can be found in the responses module.

  • E.g., the function foxsi4_telescope2_arf will return the ARF data for FOXSI-4 telescope 2.

• Level 2 (recommended use): Loader functions that are named after their position in the FOXSI(-4) payload. All of these functions start with foxsi4_position# where # refers to the telescope position to which the response product belongs.

  • These can be found in the telescope_parts module.

  • E.g., the function foxsi4_position2_optics will return the optics information relating to position 2 using the predetermined and appropriate function from the effective_area module.

• Level 1: Loader functions that have as little as possible description to its place in the FOXSI(-4) instrument, relying on its own description.

  • These can be found in modules like attenuation, detector_response, effective_area, and quantum_efficiency.

Even lower level handling

A user can decide in which way they would like to interact with the response products. A potential Level 0 would be the user interacting with the files themselves directly. Depending on how the package is installed the files may be stored in different locations on your machine.

To find where the files are stored in the package, and indeed your local machine, you can use the global package variable, responseFilePath:

import response_tools
print(response_tools.responseFilePath)

The functions in the package use this path to automatically find the correct files.