IACT Telescopes estimator

iact-estimator is a Python3-based package that allows the estimation of the performance of an IACT telescope system to detect a gamma-ray source.

It started from legacy scripts which were developed by Dr. Julian Sitarek for the MAGIC telescopes to aid users in preparing their observational proposals.

Installation

For the moment there is no public packaged release.

1. clone the repository
2. (recommended) create a virtual environment (a conda environment file is provided)
3. pip install -e . (if you are a developer add [dev])

Usage

You can use the package using the available command line entry points.

Assuming you are working from a directory called project

1. get the default configuration file with iact-estimator config
2. launch the estimation with iact-estimator run --config config.yml --source-name "Crab Nebula"

Note

Currently the source name must be a valid identifier from the SIMBAD, NED or VizieR databases.

For more details use the -h option to show the help menu.

The package is also a library, so you can use it to make your scripts or in a notebook (see example notebook in the documentation).

The packaged data can be extended to other IACT systems, provided the data has been published.

The support to load your own data files will be provided.

Documentation

Documentation can be compiled locally after a successful installation,

1. make -C docs html
2. open docs/build/html/index.html with your favourite browser

How to contribute

This project is public and everyone can contribute to it.

Instructions on how to contribute to the project are provided in the documentation.