ZHTOOLS: X-ray data analysis

ZHTOOLS is a collection of stand-alone UNIX programs useful for reduction of astronomical images in FITS format and of X-ray data in general, developed by Alexey Vikhlinin. Currently, zhtools includes the following analysis tasks:

General Astronomy Tasks

  ad2rad
       h:m:s d:m:s -> radians
  angle2size
      angular to proper size conversion in different cosmologies
  size2angle
       proper to angular size conversion in different cosmologies
  distance
       angular distance between two points on the sky
  rad2ad
       radians -> h:m:s d:m:s

FITS Data Manipulations

  addcomm
       add comment records to FITS header
  addhist
       adds history records to FITS header
  chimtype
       change data type (e.g. real->integer) in an image. Data may be optionally rescaled.
  copyheader
       copy header keywords from one FITS file to another (see also FTOOL cphead).
  copywcs
       copy just the World Coordinate System keywords from the header of one FITS image to others.
  fcolappend
       append a constant column to a FITS table
  fitsparsename
       Prints components of the extended FITS file name.
  fitspha
       convert ASCII files to FITS PHA (see also FTOOL ascii2pha).
  gtiexp
       prints out the total exposure of the GTI file
  gtifits
       converts ASCII GTI files to FITS format
  iffits
       prints 1 if its argument is a fits file, 0 otherwise
  listfits
       print out FITS header keywords. See also listhead supplied with FITSIO.
  modifyheader
       modifies FITS header. This tools is derived from FTOOL fmodhead but incorporates two important improvements
  printkey
       prints a FITS keyword value
  rfits
       convert fits image to unformatted fortran file
  wfits
       convert unformatted fortran file to fits

Image Tasks

  adapt
       smooth an image with circular top hat filter of adaptive size
  addimages
       coadd images in the sky coordinates
  atrous
       convolve an image with `a trous wavelet
  contmap
       draw a contour map
  createimg
       make a constant value image
  dsscoord
       DSS pixels to sky coordinates
  dssdetect
       detect sources in DSS plates
  dssoverlay
       overlay contours on DSS (or any other) image
  findpeak
       find local maxima in an image
  gaussimg
       simulate a Gaussian image
  imarith
       simple arith. on two images. See also imcalc and imcarith
  imblock
       block and reblock the image
  imcalc
       arbitrary image calculus; for simple arithmetic, see imarith and imcarith
  imcarith
       constant value arithmetics with an image. Also sqrt, min, max, abs
  imcopy
       provided for image manupulation using FITSIO's extended name syntax
  imdiff
       reports pixel-by-pixel difference of two images
  imexam
       report many image statistics
  img2list
       convert integer image to pixel list
  improj
       projection of a 2-d image along a direction
  imsmo
       smooth image with a Gaussian filter
  island
       find connected domains in an image
  kingimg
       simulate a beta-model image
  list2img
       convert ASCII `photon list' to an image
  makeimg
       make an image from FITS events files. Probably made obsolete by fitscopy
  mexhat
       convolve an image with the Mexican Hat wavelet
  mkcond
       logical operation on an image
  mkedge
       set image to a value outside the given radius
  mkprof
       calculate radial surface brightness profile
  mkreg
       make a mask image from the ASCII region descriptor
  pix2sky
       pixels -> sky coordinates
  poisson
       simulate Poisson scatter
  prof2img
       convert radial surface brightness profile to a 2d image
  saoimage2reg
       translate SAOimage region file to the zhtools region descriptor; this tool is almost obsolete 
       because zhtools now understand SAOimage reg.files (see regions)
  savecont
       save contours for further use by dssoverlay
  scatter
       add Gaussian scatter to an image
  select
       apply temp, energy and spatial selection to a FITS events file; probably made obsolete by fitscopy
  setval
       set image value in a region
  sky2pix
       sky coordinates -> pixels
  sky2dss
       sky coordinates -> DSS pixels
  stackimages
       adds several images without shift
  transreg
       translate region from one WCS to another
  wvdecomp
       wavelet decomposition

ROSAT-Specific Tasks

  extrrosatspec
       extract spectrum in 34 ROSAT channels
  makerosatpsf
       make ROSAT PSPC PSF image for given source positions
  makesnowdenspec
       make spectrum from Snowden's images
  rosatpsffwhm
       return FWHM of the PSPC PSF

Misc Tasks

  getpar
       a tool to read command line arguments in shell scripts

The zhtools software package has been ported to the Solaris, Linux, and Mac OSX (Tiger on PPC and Intel) operating systems. It can be built and installed using standard commands:

  ./configure --prefix=[installdir] 	# configuration
  make					# build the software
  make install				# install in [installdir]

Latest Release

Download

• zhtools-3.0.6.tar.gz

The pre-built external libraries needed by zhtools are available here:

• zhext.tar.gz (for 32-bit and 64-bit builds)

Documentation

• Build Instructions