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Point sources

The processing sequence for performing a spectral fit on a point source (once the data files have been converted) is as follows.
  1. Create an image of the whole field using XSORT

         ICL> XSORT  SRCFILE=CYGX1_IMAGE
         
  2. Display the image using the 'I' routines.

         ICL> ILOAD  CYGX1_IMAGE
         ICL> IDISPLAY
         
  3. Choose source and background box centres and sizes

         ICL> XRTBCKBOX
         
    This will allow you to use a cursor on the image to select the position and radius of a source and background box. It then sorts events from within these boxes into a source and background spectrum.
  4. Background subtract the source file

         ICL> XRTSUB
         
    This corrects the background spectrum to that which would have been seen had this background been at the position of the source box. It then subtracts it from the source spectrum.

    NB: the correction of the background spectrum to the source position is a vignetting correction which is performed on a pulse height channel basis. In reality vignetting corrections are only calibrated for photon energies. So a small third order error is introduced by assuming that we know the "energy" of each corrected pulse height bin.

  5. Correct the subtracted spectrum

         ICL> XRTCORR
         
    This will correct the spectrum for the energy independent effects, dead time and wires. In addition it produces an array of energy dependent correction factors within the datafile. These are used as the effective area at each energy for this datafile.

  6. Produce a detector response matrix

         ICL> XRTRESP
         
    This multiplies the detector matrix file with the energy corrections array found in the corrected datafile. The resultant energy response structure is stored in the datafile.

  7. Set up a spectral model and fit the data

         ICL> SMODEL
         ICL> SFIT
         


Next: Extended sources Up: Spectral analysis Prev: Spectral analysis