aXe2web-1.1 release notes

Version 1.1 does not introduce dramatic changes, however improves the usability of the program on several areas:

• a new column with the sequence number was introduced on the object pages
• aXe2web uses css-style sheets now. By manipulating the default aXe2web style file the user can change the colours and the layout of all html pages (see setting '--css_file)
• aXe2web can create html pages only for a small subset of a larger data set. To do this the ID's of the objects must be listed in a selection file (see setting '--sel_file').
• aXe2web can produce gnu-zipped files with the spectral data. Links lead from the 'Object ID' column on the obect pages to these files (see '--data_out').
• aXe input catalogues can now have multiple magnitude columns. The user can specify with the setting '--mag_lambda'at what wavelength the magnitude values reported on the webpages should refer to.

aXe2web

This additional task to the aXe package takes the input catalogue and the aXe output files and produces an html summary. The core of that summary are object pages which display a number of results for each catalogue object in an html-table. Every object shows as a table line the reference number, magnitude in the magnitude system of the direct object, the X and Y position of the direct object, its Right Ascension and Declination, a cut-out image showing the direct object, the spectrum stamp image showing the 2D spectrum, a 1D extracted spectrum in counts and the same in flux units.

To facilitate the navigation within a data set overview and index pages accompany the object pages. The overview page contains for each object the basic information sequence number, reference number, X,Y,RA,Dec and magnitude. The index page includes a table with the ordered reference number of all objects. Direct links from both the overview page and the index page guide to the corresponding locations of the objects in the object pages. An overview on aXe2web is given in [1].

The details of the html summary produced by aXe2web are controlled by a set of around 20 keywords or settings which influence the presentation of the objects in various ways. There exist for example keywords/settings to

• order the objects on a catalogue column (usually magnitude)
• specify the number of objects that are displayed
• limit the wavelength range of the spectra
• produce spectra with/without error bars

A detailed list of all settings can be found following the links given in section Documentation below.

Examples of an html summary created by aXe2web are given here:

• Example 1. The webpages show the 100 brightest objects from the input data set. The spectra are plotted withour error bars, and the sources are not marked. The parameter file is: example_1.par.
• Example 2. The input data are the same as in Example 1. However all objects are shown, ordered according to right ascension. The sources are marked, and the error bars are plotted. The parameter file is: example_2.par.

In both examples the flagging of contaminated data points with blue symbols alerts the viewer to consider these pixels with caution.

References

[1] Walsh, J., Kümmel, M., 2004, "Comfortable Visualisation of ACS Spectra", ST-ECF Newsletter, 35, p.9

Maintained by Martin Kümmel <mkuemmel@eso.org>