1. You will find here simulated light curves containing short duration flares and eclipses, created with SIXTE and SRCTOOL.

Some basic infos:

* The SIXTE event files were created for a source flux of 1e-11 erg/s, with a power-law spectrum (nH=0.5, Gamma=2).<<BR>>
* The input light curves for SIXTE are defined by (H=heaviside function, t=time):<<BR>>
  a) FLARE: P1+P2*H(t-P3)*exp(-(t-P3)/P4) with P1=base level, P2=amplitude, P3=start of flare, P4=decay constant <<BR>>
  b) ECLIPSE: P1-P2*H(t-P3)*(1-H(t-P4)) with P1=base level, P2=amplitude, P3=eclipse ingress, P4=eclipse egress <<BR>>
  with total duration of ~40s (single scan) and time sampling of 0.1 s
* From the event files created by SIXTE, light curves are generated using the eSASS SRCTOOL, with 2 s time sampling.  

Example of light curves (3 with flares and 3 with eclipses, 7 telescopes merged):

[[attachment:flare_am05.2_du07.6_040_LightCurve_source_1.fits]]<<BR>>
[[attachment:flare_am11.0_du04.5_040_LightCurve_source_1.fits]]<<BR>>
[[attachment:flare_am15.0_du03.9_040_LightCurve_source_1.fits]]<<BR>>
[[attachment:eclip_am02.0_du16.3_040_LightCurve_source_1.fits]]<<BR>>
[[attachment:eclip_am04.0_du21.1_040_LightCurve_source_1.fits]]<<BR>>
[[attachment:eclip_am05.8_du25.9_040_LightCurve_source_1.fits]]<<BR>>

The value of the simulated amplitude (P2) and flare/eclipse duration (P4, in s), is indicated in the file name.


2. The code to perform flare, eclipse and linear model fits is available here (*):


[[attachment:characterize_variability.py]]<<BR>>

The algorithm was developed within the EXTraS project (aperiodic variability working group).<<BR>>
The returned parameters are: non-reduced chi-square, d.o.f., p-value, parameters values and errors.<<BR>>

The script to read the input light curve, perform the linear/eclipse/flare fit and calculate the signal-to-noise ratio of the flare/eclipse is (*):


[[attachment:get_param.py]]<<BR>>



An example of how to call the above routines and print output values, is given here (*): 


[[attachment:call_get_param.py]]<<BR>>



(*) python file to retrieve under "Attachment/get" tabs.