Stingray: Open-source spectral-timing software

Presented at the 16th AAS High Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD) meeting in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Abstract: New ideas about how to analyze X-ray astronomy data have initiated the “spectral-timing revolution,” leading to a surge in developments of analysis techniques. Many individual tools and libraries exist, and some are even publicly available, but what has been lacking is a coherent set for a complete analysis. Stingray is a new community-developed, open-source software package in Python for spectral-timing analysis of astrophysical data. This software package merges existing efforts for a timing package in Python and provides the basis for developing spectral-timing analysis tools, while following the Astropy guidelines for modern open-source scientific programming. Stingray has a scripting interface, an affiliated graphical user interface, and a well-documented application programming interface (API) for power-users. The ultimate goal is to provide the community with a package that eases the learning curve for state-of-the-art spectral-timing techniques, with a correct statistical framework, to make maximal use of new data from NICER and potentially STROBE-X. Stingray is pip-installable via the Python Package Index, and we warmly welcome community involvement on our GitHub code repository. For more information, see the Stingray website: http://stingraysoftware.github.io/

Transcript

1. Stingray: Open-source spectral- timing software Abigail Stevens (U. Amsterdam), Matteo Bachetti (INAF-Cagliari), Paul Balm (Timelab), Daniela Huppenkothen (NYU-CDS), Simone Migliari (ESAC, Timelab) http://stingraysoftware.github.io/ A.L.Stevens@uva.nl @abigailStev
2. Why make Stingray? A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev Image: XKCD
3. Why make Stingray? — Not much public X-ray timing code Legacy code, “black box” — No public X-ray spectral-timing code Public code = anyone can read source code, code is well-documented A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev
4. Why open-source? A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev — Reproducibility — Transparency — Reusability — Transfer to other fields? Image: GitHub
5. Why Python? Slide adapted from J. VanderPlas SciPy PyMC A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev
6. Stingray + HENDRICS + DAVE Python application programming interface Shell script interface Graphical user interface A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev + tutorials in Jupyter notebooks
7. —  Library of time series analysis methods —  Power spectra, cross spectra, bispectra —  Lag-frequency & lag-energy spectra —  Rms & covariance spectra —  Coherence, cross-correlation —  Handles GTIs, pulsar & QPO searches —  Simulator, modeling Leads: D. Huppenkothen, M. Bachetti, A.L. Stevens A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev Image adapted from Hyperbole and a Half Stingray + HENDRICS + DAVE
8. A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev Stingray + HENDRICS + DAVE
9. A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev Stingray + HENDRICS + DAVE
10. A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev Stingray + HENDRICS + DAVE Phase-resolved spectroscopy for quasi-periodic oscillations Handling instrument response matrices Coming soon! Lead: D. Huppenkothen Lead: A. Stevens RXTE
11. Stingray + HENDRICS + DAVE A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev Lead: M. Bachetti
12. Stingray + HENDRICS + DAVE Data Analysis for Variable Events A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev Leads: P. Balm, S. Migliari Image from M. Bachetti
13. Stingray + HENDRICS + DAVE Data Analysis for Variable Events A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev Leads: P. Balm, S. Migliari Image from M. Bachetti
14. A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev Order changes depending on updates github.com/ StingraySoftware
15. Get involved! A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev
16. Get involved! A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev Please try it out and give us feedback! What functionality do you want to see? You can also send us an email or Slack message.
17. The faces behind the code Daniela Matteo Abigail Paul Simone Himanshu Usman Ricardo Evandro Haroon Omar Danish = Google Summer of Code A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev
18. Summary —  X-ray spectral-timing is joining the ecosystem of open-source Python software! —  ‘pip install stingray’ or fork it on GitHub —  Code: github.com/StingraySoftware —  Tutorials: github.com/StingraySoftware/notebooks —  Software is vital for the future of astronomy A.L. Stevens Ÿ U. Amsterdam Ÿ @abigailStev