Contour binning: a new technique for spatially-resolved X-ray spectroscopy applied to Cassiopeia A

By Jeremy S. Sanders. 2006

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We present a new technique for choosing spatial regions for X-ray spectroscopy, called “contour binning”. The method chooses regions by following contours on a smoothed image of the object. In addition we re-explore a simple method for adaptively smoothing X-ray images according to the local count rate, we term “accumulative smoothing”, which is a generalisation of the method used by FADAPT. The algorithms are tested by applying them to a simulated cluster data set. We illustrate the techniques by using them on a 50 ks Chandra observation of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. Generated maps of the object showing abundances in eight different elements, absorbing column density, temperature, ionisation timescale and velocity are presented. Tests show that contour binning reproduces surface brightness considerably better than other methods. It is particularly suited to objects with detailed spatial structure such as supernova remnants and the cores of galaxy clusters, producing aesthetically pleasing results.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Ecology, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4c5980b65dc74a81e9fd7915d8cc0627aa975668

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Citations in the corpus

X-ray spectroscopy of galaxy clusters: studying astrophysical processes in the largest celestial laboratories (2009, methodology): “The binning of these pixels has been guided by regions of similar surfacebrightness (Sanders 2006).”
A deeper X‐ray study of the core of the Perseus galaxy cluster: the power of sound waves and the distribution of metals and cosmic rays (2007, methodology): “This is roughly comparable to the buoyancy time-scale estimated for the ancient bubble of 100 Myr (Dunn, Fabian & Sanders 2006), given the large uncertainties, but may require that diffusion is suppressed on small scales as it appears unlikely that the metals could have been injected in situ.”