The spectral analysis system xspec, which is part of the XANADU software originally written for analysis of EXOSAT data, provides a larger variety of spectral models than those supported in PROS. PROS format spectral data can be input into xspec using the XANADU program proscon.
Users should note that for spectral data generated in PROS 2.3 or later, the PROS program downspecrdf must be run to generate the input file to proscon. Also, the current version of proscon (v. 2.3) requires the full 256-channel pulse height spectrum for the PSPC.
Thus, in IRAF,
xs> qpspec full=yes display=0 # generate full 256 channels and # suppress printout of spectrum source qpoe file: xdata$rp110590n00 source region descriptor: c 6940 9390 240 background qpoe file: xdata$rp110590n00 bkgd region descriptor: a 6930 9390 300 600 root name for output files [root_obs.tab, etc.]: rp90 xs> xs> downspecrdf display=0 list of root names for files to convert [root_obs.tab]: rp90 Output (pre-RDF) table file: rp90_prdf_obs.tab xs> and at the operating system (OS) level, OS-prompt> proscon PROSCON version 2.3 Input file : rp90_prdf_obs.tab OS-prompt>Output of proscon will be the pha and rsp files rp90_prdf_obs.pha and rp90_prdf_obs.rsp, which can be directly input into xspec.
Both proscon and xspec are provided and supported by the HEASARC at GSFC. For more information, contact xanprob@legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov. Software may be obtained via anonymous ftp to legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov, in the subdirectory /software/xanadu.
HEASARC provides a set of IRAF tools for translating PROS spectral data into xspec format. The task stw2pha in the caltools package of ftools v. 2.9 will convert FITS versions (generated with the STSDAS task stwfits) of the _obs.tab, _soh.tab, and _boh.tab qpsec output files into an OGIP standard FITS file, which can be read by xspec. Using this pha FITS file, the task pcarf in the rosat package will create the position-dependant part of the response. Which then can be used in conjunction with the detector's calibration response matrix in xspec.