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Last modified: 26 October 2020


Chandra Ray Tracer (ChaRT)

The Chandra Ray Tracer (ChaRT) simulates the best available point spread function (PSF) for a point source at any off-axis angle and for any energy or spectrum. Technical details are available from the About ChaRT page.

There are five steps to using ChaRT:

  1. Prepare to run ChaRT: determine the input parameters for the PSF raytrace.

  2. Run ChaRT: run the raytrace simulation.

  3. Retrieve ray file: obtain the ChaRT rays via FTP.

  4. Create an event file: project the rays onto the detector plane using MARX.

  5. Creating an Image of the PSF: create an image from the MARX simulated event file.

Projecting Simulated Events and Creating the Image with simulate_psf

The results of steps 4 and 5 may be obtained by using the simulate_psf script.

If you need to run multiple ray traces, you should consider installing SAOTrace and running the traces locally.

Citing ChaRT in a Publication

If you are writing a paper and would like to cite ChaRT, we recommend the following paper:

ChaRT: The Chandra Ray Tracer
C. Carter, et al.
ADASS XII ASP Conference Series, Vol. 295, 2003, p.477
