This is a part of the UK Mirror of the HEASARC HEAsoft pages, maintained by LEDAS. All HEAsoft-related links on this page are to HTML files or data stored at Leicester, unless indicated by a . Please refer any problems with these pages to Duncan Law-Green (ledas-help@star.le.ac.uk).

An X-Ray Spectral Fitting Package

User's Guide for version 11.3

Helpful information available includes:

Link to download and install instructions page

User Manual

XSPEC v11.3.1 release notes

XSPEC12 A site section previewing the design and implementation of the upcoming version of XSPEC, due for limited release (with many enhancements but some less-used capabilities not fully implemented) early in 2004. Requests for the new version can be made to xspec12@heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov

For an overview of the redesign project, see Redesign & Reimplementation of XSPEC Dorman, Ben & Arnaud, K. A. 2001 in Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems X, ASP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 238. Edited by F. R. Harnden, Jr., Francis A. Primini, and Harry E. Payne. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, p.415

known issues with the current release

More models for XSPEC v11.3

Using the MINUIT library in XSPEC

Background Subtraction

Spatial-Spectral Fitting of Clusters with ASCA data

advice on writing the various FITS file formats used by XSPEC

example Tcl scripts for the tcl/tk-based user interface.

WEBSPEC A WWW interface for XSPEC. Currently, it can be used to simulate spectral data for a variety of X-ray missions/instruments.

The manual for XSPEC v.11.3 is available in three formats:

Compressed Postscript

Adobe Acrobat (link to free download for reader) Portable Document Format (PDF)

HTML (unzip/untar this file in its own directory)

The latest XSPEC reference is ... Arnaud, K.A., 1996, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems V, eds. Jacoby G. and Barnes J., p17, ASP Conf. Series volume 101.