Francois Brun / ctools

Commit 415eb5cad1eee0ecabdd840de8e4003fbdc30ece

Authored by Christoph Deil
1 parent 1b831d9b

Add page about plotting to user manual

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doc/source/user_manual/index.rst
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... ... @@ -11,5 +11,6 @@ User Manual
11 11 enhancing
12 12 reference
13 13 expert
  14 + plotting
14 15 glossary
15 16  
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doc/source/user_manual/plotting.rst 0 → 100644
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  1 +Plotting
  2 +========
  3 +
  4 +Gammalib and ctools currently do not include classes and scripts to make plots.
  5 +
  6 +This is intentional because creating and maintaining plotting tools that work on most user's machines
  7 +and cover most user's needs is a big project in itself, and deciding to support a
  8 +plotting package that is popular now as part of the CTA science tools could become very problematic in the future.
  9 +
  10 +But we realise that most ctools users need to create plots for their high-level science results,
  11 +so on this page we provide a few pointers to external packages and tools.
  12 +
  13 +General
  14 +-------
  15 +
  16 +The most common way to create publication-quality astronomy plots at the moment is to use the `matplotlib`_
  17 +Python plotting package. As illustrated by the `matplotlib gallery`_, virtually any plot can be constructed,
  18 +but matplotlib doesn't have built-in easy-to-use classes or functions to create the common plots for gamma-ray
  19 +astronomy, which are sky maps and spectra, so in the sections below we give some specific pointers for those.
  20 +
  21 +Sky maps
  22 +--------
  23 +
  24 +For creating publication quality sky map plots via a Python script a good choice is to use `APLPy`_, `WCSAxes`_
  25 +or `kapteyn`_, which are all based on matplotlib.
  26 +
  27 +You can also use interactive astronomy image viewers like `DS9`_, `Aladin`_ or `Ginga`_
  28 +which allow you to save the image to a PNG or PDF file after customising it interactively,
  29 +but also contain command line options to create the plot, i.e. you can write a bash or Python script
  30 +to make the plot reproducible (DS9 and Ginga also feature direct communication with Python,
  31 +but that is a bit harder to use and usually used for interactive image analysis, not plotting scripts).
  32 +
  33 +
  34 +Spectra and light curves
  35 +------------------------
  36 +
  37 +To plot spectra or spectral energy distributions (including flux model curves, flux model error bands,
  38 +flux points and residuals) and light curves, you can use matplotlib directly,
  39 +or use the classes and scripts in `Gammapy`_.
  40 +
  41 +Another option is to use virtual observatory interactive spectrum tools like `IRIS`_, `CASSIS`_ or `VOSpec`_
  42 +which allow you to save the plot to a PNG or PDF file after creating it interactively.
  43 +
  44 +
  45 +.. _DS9: http://ds9.si.edu/
  46 +.. _Aladin: http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/
  47 +.. _Ginga: http://ejeschke.github.io/ginga/
  48 +.. _matplotlib: http://matplotlib.org/
  49 +.. _matplotlib gallery: http://matplotlib.org/gallery.html
  50 +.. _WCSAxes: http://wcsaxes.readthedocs.org/
  51 +.. _APLPy: http://aplpy.github.io/
  52 +.. _kapteyn: https://www.astro.rug.nl/software/kapteyn/
  53 +.. _Gammapy: https://gammapy.readthedocs.org/
  54 +.. _IRIS: http://cxc.cfa.harvard.edu/iris/
  55 +.. _CASSIS: http://cassis.irap.omp.eu/
  56 +.. _VOSpec: http://www.sciops.esa.int/index.php?project=SAT&page=vospec
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