Redistribution
RMF. It is a wørd to strike terror even into the hearts of the intrepid. It refers to the spread in the measured energy of an incoming photon, and even astronomers often stumble over what it is and what it contains. It essentially sets down the measurement error for registering the energy of a photon in the given instrument.
Thankfully, its usage is robustly built into analysis software such as Sherpa or XSPEC and most people don’t have to deal with the nitty gritty on a daily basis. But given the profusion of statistical software being written for astronomers, it is perhaps useful to go over what it means. Continue reading ‘Redistribution’ »