Standard 1 Light Curve Display
- Shows PCA counts/bin vs time in bins.
- Updated every 128 seconds.
- The time resolution can be selected incrementally from 0.125 sec to 64 sec.
- An explanation of the timestamps.
Orientation:
- At the top is a bar of options controls. (Options explained below.)
- At the top center of the lightcurve is a status line showing important
options selected. If you save an ascii dump, these options will be
preserved in the output.
- Below the lightcurve is the color-coded summary of each detector's count
rate. This will most likely not be of much interest to guest observers,
but is more of a health/safety monitor.
- More useful is the box on the lower right, which shows the max, min, and
average count rate of the sum of all selected detectors, over all the bins
in the lightcurve. Note that this will also average non-source data like
occultation and slew data, but not SAA data (which will appear as gaps).
Options buttons:
File:
- Freeze [to stop scrolling of data, select again to resume.]
- Save or E-mail File [Allows you to email an ascii dump or postscript plot to yourself.
- Quit [quits the window.]
Select: [to choose what data is displayed in the lightcurve]
- Sum all Good Xenon [default, shows the count rate of the sum of all PCUs.]
- Sum all Very Large Events [good for watching the orbital background.]
- Sum all Propane Events [Propane levels vary with orbital background, also will get very large if we get too near an SAA.]
- Sum all Other Events [events that do not fall into the above categories.]
- PCU 1 ... 5 [shows only data from that PCU. Used for diagnostic.]
- all 5 PCUs [overlays data from each PCU, color coded. Check on how many PCUs are on during your observation.]
Y axis [to set y-axis scale]
- Linear - zero min [linear scale, minimum is set to zero.]
- Log - zero min [logarithmic scale, minimum is set to zero.]
- Linear - own scale [Linear scale, pops up a dialogue box where you can set your own limits.]
- Log - own scale [Log scale, as above.]
Statistics [chooses what units to show at the bottom of the window.]
- Total Counts [calculates total area under the curve in number of total counts regardless of binsize.]
- counts/sec [much more useful, shows counts/sec]
Options [selects which bin size to use for time scaling. The plot always contains 1024 bins, so the resulting total time span is also shown below.] See warning about loss of data below!
- X1 (125 ms bins) [default] [results in 128 sec total span]
- X2 (250 ms bins) [256 sec (=~ 4.5 min) span]
- X4 (500 ms bins) [512 sec (=~ 9 min) span]
- X8 (1s bins) [1024 sec (=~ 17 min) span]
- X16 (2s bins) [2048 sec (=~ 34 min) span]
- X32 (4s bins) [4096 sec (=~ 68 min) span]
- X64 (8s bins) [8192 sec (=~ 2h 17 min) span]
- X128 (16s bins) [16384 sec (=~ 4.5 hour) span]
- X256 (32s bins) [32768 sec (=~ 9 hour) span]
- X512 (64s bins) [65536 sec (=~ 18 hour) span]
WARNING! Selecting a new binning does NOT re-bin the data previously shown in the window! The data in the window will be cleared and the new binning will take effect on the next data received.
Display
- with Gaps [show SAAs and data gaps as gaps in the lightcurve, preserving the correct temporal spacing.]
- without Gaps [dont show the above, all data is shown contiguously, including occult and slew data.]
- Late Data [pops up a window when data is late]
- Strip Chart [shows late data graphically]
- Clear LC [clears the lightcurve]
XTE SOF - xtesof@xtesof.nascom.nasa.gov
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