XAssist is a NASA AISR-funded project for the automation of X-ray
astrophysics, with emphasis on galaxies. It is nearing completion of
its initially funded effort, and is working well for
Chandra and
ROSAT
data. Initial support for
XMM-Newton data is present as well.
It is capable of data reprocessing,
source detection, and preliminary
spatial, temporal and spectral analysis for each source with
sufficient counts. The bulk of the system is written in Python, which
in turn drives underlying software (CIAO for
Chandra data,
etc.). Future work will include a GUI (mainly for beginners and
status monitoring) and the exposure of at least some functionality as
web services. The latter will help XAssist to eventually become part
of the VO, making advanced queries possible, such as determining the
X-ray fluxes of counterparts to HST or SDSS sources (including the use
of unpublished X-ray data), and add the ability of ``on-the-fly'' X-ray
processing. Pipelines are running on
ROSAT,
Chandra and now
XMM-Newton observations of galaxies to demonstrate XAssist's
capabilities, and the results are available online (in real time) at
http://www.xassist.org.
XAssist itself as well as various associated
projects are available for download.
We have developed a software package to address these concerns.
XAssist is capable of
performing data reduction and preliminary
analysis for ROSAT, Chandra and XMM-Newton data. It is fully
automatic making it well-suited for surveys, as well as for the
reprocessing of existing data. Below we will discuss its
capabilities and prospects for the future.