Updated 11 months ago by Knödlseder Jürgen

ctools¶

ctools is a software package for the scientific analysis of astronomical gamma-ray data. The package comprises an extensive set of tools for the analysis of data from existing and future Cherenkov telescopes, including H.E.S.S., VERITAS, MAGIC and CTA. ctools supports also the analysis of data from CGRO/COMPTEL, Fermi/LAT and INTEGRAL/SPI, enabling the exploration of the full gamma-ray energy band, spanning from hundreds of keV to hundreds of TeV.

The ctools philosophy is inherited from ftools and consists of providing building blocks that perform well-defined science data analysis tasks, including observation and event selection, binning, sky map creation, source detection, model fitting, spectra, phase curve and light curve generation, and observation simulations. The building blocks are then combined by the user to create flexible analysis workflows that can fit the needs of any scientist.

ctools can be used as command-line executables alike ftools to carry out simple analyses even for users without any programming skills. Furthermore, the tools are accessible through dedicated Python modules providing an alternative user interface to the software, as well as the possibility to provide tutorials in the form of Jupyter notebooks. Shell or Python scripts can be used by more advanced users to build analysis pipelines to any degrees of complexity.

ctools are based on GammaLib, a versatile toolbox for the scientific analysis of astronomical gamma-ray data.

ctools is free software distributed under the GNU GPL license version 3

Getting ctools¶

The actual version of the ctools code can be retrieved from our git repository using

$ git clone https://gitlab.in2p3.fr/ctools/ctools.git

In case that you get error: SSL certificate problem, verify that the CA cert is OK. you may add

$ export GIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY=true

before retrieving the code. Before you can build the ctools code obtained using git you have to generate the configuration script using

$ ./autogen.sh

Then you may proceed with the usual

$ ./configure
$ make
$ make check
$ [sudo] make install

Documentation¶

The ctools documentation is available on the dedicated web site http://cta.irap.omp.eu/ctools/. This documentation refers to the last ctools release. The documentation corresponding to the current development branch can be found at http://cta.irap.omp.eu/ctools-devel/.

Support & getting help¶

If you need support, please send an e-mail to jurgen.knodlseder@irap.omp.eu.

You may also submit a bug report, a patch or a feature request by using this form. Before submitting a bug report, a patch or a feature request here, please read the Submission guidelines.

Contributing¶

If you would like to contribute to the development of ctools, please send an e-mail to jurgen.knodlseder@irap.omp.eu by specifying in which area you would like to contribute.

Once you have a user ID and a password, please read Contributing to ctools before starting your software development.