This notebook covers the basics of creating an event list object and carrying out various operations such as simulating time and energies, joining, storing and retrieving event lists.

Setup

Import some useful libraries.



In [1]:

    
import numpy as np

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
%matplotlib inline

Import some relevant stingray libraries.



In [2]:

    
from stingray.events import EventList
from stingray.lightcurve import Lightcurve

Creating EventList from Photon Arrival Times

Given photon arrival times, an eventlist object can be created.



In [3]:

    
times = [0.5, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5]

Create event list object by passing arrival times as argument.



In [4]:

    
ev = EventList(times)
ev.time









    Out[4]:





array([ 0.5,  1.5,  2.5,  3.5], dtype=float128)

Loading EventList from Lightcurve

Event lists can be loaded from light curve, where the standard followed is as follows: as many events are created as the counts in the lightcurve at the time specified by time bins.

To demonstrate this, define a light curve.



In [5]:

    
times = np.arange(3)
counts = np.floor(np.random.rand(3)*5)
lc = Lightcurve(times, counts)



In [6]:

    
lc.time, lc.counts









    Out[6]:





(array([0, 1, 2]), array([ 0.,  2.,  4.]))

Now, eventlist can be loaded by calling static from_lc() method.



In [7]:

    
ev = EventList.from_lc(lc)
ev.time









    Out[7]:





array([ 1.0,  1.0,  2.0,  2.0,  2.0,  2.0], dtype=float128)

Simulating EventList from Lightcurve

Alternatively, event list can be simulated from light curve using acceptance rejection method.



In [8]:

    
ev = EventList()
ev.simulate_times(lc)
ev.time









    Out[8]:





array([ 0.88000835,  1.062921,  1.5550138,  1.6221689,  1.7120616,
        1.7332546,  1.9129681,  2.3186986,  2.4757699], dtype=float128)

Loading EventList from a 'fits' file



In [46]:

    
ev = EventList()
ev = ev.read('events.fits', 'fits')
ev.time[1:10]









    Out[46]:





array([ 80000353.0,  80000056.0,  80000067.0,  80000637.0,  80000778.0,
        80000159.0,  80000631.0,  80000563.0,  80000817.0], dtype=float128)

Recovering Lightcurve from EventList

After simulating event list, the original light curve can be recovered. Let's demonstrate by creating a light curve.



In [9]:

    
times = np.arange(50)
counts = np.floor(np.random.rand(50)*50000)
lc = Lightcurve(times, counts)

Simulate an event list.



In [10]:

    
ev = EventList()
ev.simulate_times(lc)

Recover original light curve curve using to_lc() method. Here, dt defines time resolution, tstart the starting time, and tseg the total time duration.



In [11]:

    
lc_new = ev.to_lc(dt=1, tstart=-0.5, tseg=50)



In [12]:

    
plt.plot(lc.counts,'r-', lc_new.counts, 'g-')
plt.xlabel('Times')
plt.ylabel('Counts')









    Out[12]:





<matplotlib.text.Text at 0x11522c950>

As can be seen from the figure above, the recovered light curve is aligned with the original light curve.

Simulating Energies

In order to simulate energies, a spectral distribution needs to be passed.



In [139]:

    
spectrum = [[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6],[1000, 2040, 1000, 3000, 4020, 2070]]



In [140]:

    
ev = EventList(ncounts=10)
ev.simulate_energies(spectrum)

Joining EventLists

Two event lists can also be joined together.



In [141]:

    
ev1 = EventList(time=[1,2,3])



In [142]:

    
ev2 = EventList(time=[4,5])



In [143]:

    
ev = ev1.join(ev2)
ev.time









    Out[143]:





array([ 1.0,  2.0,  3.0,  4.0,  5.0], dtype=float128)

IO

IO in all major formats including pickle, hdf5, fits and ascii is supported.

Below is an example of retrieving event list from a fits file.



In [144]:

    
ev = EventList()
ev = ev.read('events.fits', 'fits')
ev.time[1:10]









    Out[144]:





array([ 80000353.0,  80000056.0,  80000067.0,  80000637.0,  80000778.0,
        80000159.0,  80000631.0,  80000563.0,  80000817.0], dtype=float128)

Alternatively, we can used hdf5 to store and later retrieve data.



In [145]:

    
ev.write('ev.hdf5', 'hdf5')
ev = ev.read('ev.hdf5', 'hdf5')
ev.time[1:10]









    Out[145]:





array([ 80000353.0,  80000056.0,  80000067.0,  80000637.0,  80000778.0,
        80000159.0,  80000631.0,  80000563.0,  80000817.0], dtype=float128)

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