This package allows people to generate images of black holes for the purposes of X-ray interferometry.
This package uses a combination of fortran and python. All ray-tracing is done with fortran while python provides a convenient interface for manipulating images and parameters.
Due to the usage of fortran, it requires compilation. Run the compile_xspec_{OS} file inside of the reltrans file to do this.
Once the fortran is compiled, one can use this package by running the image_generator.py script from the terminal with:
python3 image_generator.py
Initially, this script will prompt you for attributes of the black hole and allow you to input parameters that describe the accretion disk and corona.
Currently, it is assumed that the corona is a point source around the black hole. This is obviously an extremely gross implementation for X-ray interferometry imaging and is thus a priority.
Once these attributes have been set, one submits a viewing angle of the system, and the camera FOV. The program will then generate the image, plot it to your screen and then prompt you if you wish to save the image to disk. You can prompt as many viewing angles as you wish, saving them to the user-inputted path.
You can exit at any time by inputting exit.
Please feel free to fork this repository and submit pull-requests if you have features that you'd like to see implemented. Otherwise, contact one of the maintainers of this repository.
Currently, this package requires the installation of heasoft. Long term, we'd like to be able to use models which do not require explicit heasoft installation. If you'd like to contribute to this effort, please let us know, or check out nDspec.