Energy Conversion Factors for X-ray Astronomy

ecfxa is a Python package providing tools for the estimation of ECFs for different astronomical X-ray missions. Currently we include XMM-Newton/EPIC, Swift/XRT and eROSITA. ECFs where calculated consistently for the different missions using the most updated calibration files at the date of the package release.

X-ray sources detected through photon counter cameras are characterized by count-rates at a given energy band. These count-rates (CR) can be converted into physical fluxes using the calibrated response of the detector and assuming an specific spectral model via:

FLUX = CR / ECF

where the ECF (Energy Conversion Factor) encapsulate the information about the response and spectral model for the given energy band. For an in-depth explanation of ECF and how they are calculated see Mateos et al. 2009 or the eROSITA ECF tutorial.

Details about our ECF calculations for the different missions can be found in the corresponding Jupyter notebooks included in the ecfxa GitHub repository.

Installation

> pip install ecfxa

Examples

>>> import ecfxa
>>> ero_ecfs = ecfxa.eROSITA(eband="SOFT")
>>> ero_ecfs(nh=3e20, gamma=2.0)
<Quantity 1.18592291e+12 cm2 / erg>

We provide a Jupyter notebook with examples on how to use ecfxa for different X-ray missions. Check the full documentation here.