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Stingray: Next-Generation Spectral Timing
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Stingray is a community-developed astrophysical spectral-timing software package written in Python.
.. image:: images/stingray_logo.png
:width: 700
:scale: 40%
:alt: Stingray logo, outline of a stingray on top of a graph of the power spectrum of an X-ray binary
:align: center
There are a number of official software packages for X-ray spectral fitting (XSPEC, ISIS, Sherpa, ...).
Such a widely used and standard software package does not exist for X-ray timing, so until now it has mainly been the domain of custom, proprietary software.
Stingray originated during the 2016 workshop `The X-ray Spectral-Timing Revolution `_: a group of X-ray astronomers and developers decided to agree on a common platform to develop a new software package.
The goals were to merge existing efforts towards a timing package in Python, following the best guidelines for modern open-source programming, thereby providing the basis for developing spectral-timing analysis tools.
This software provides an easily accessible scripting interface, a GUI, and an API for experienced coders.
Stingray's ultimate goal is to provide the community with a package that eases the learning curve for advanced spectral-timing techniques, with a correct statistical framework.
Further spectral-timing functionality, in particularly command line scripts based on the API defined within Stingray, is available in the package `HENDRICS `_.
A graphical user interface is under development as part of the project `DAVE `_.
.. important::
If you use Stingray for work presented in a publication or talk, please help the project by providing a proper :doc:`citation `.
Contents
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.. toctree::
:maxdepth: 2
intro
install
core
dataexplo
modeling
simulator
pulsar
deadtime
api
history
contributing
citing
acknowledgements
Indices and tables
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* :ref:`genindex`
* :ref:`modindex`
* :ref:`search`