Data formats for gamma-ray astronomy

The Data formats for gamma-ray astronomy is a community-driven initiative for the definition of a common and open high-level data format for gamma-ray instruments.

• Repository: https://github.com/open-gamma-ray-astro/gamma-astro-data-formats
• Docs: https://gamma-astro-data-formats.readthedocs.io/
• Mailing list: https://lists.nasa.gov/mailman/listinfo/open-gamma-ray-astro

Stable versions

Stable versions of the spec are done via git tags and are shown as releases here: https://github.com/open-gamma-ray-astro/gamma-astro-data-formats/releases

HTML and PDF versions for stable versions are available via the version selector in the lower left on ReadTheDocs. As an example, for version 0.3:

• HTML at https://gamma-astro-data-formats.readthedocs.io/en/v0.3/
• PDF at https://media.readthedocs.org/pdf/gamma-astro-data-formats/v0.3/gamma-astro-data-formats.pdf

The archived versions of the standard are available on zenodo:

• v0.2:
  • https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1409831
  • BibTeX citation.

Building the documents locally

To build this document locally, clone this repository and install poetry, the tool used for dependency management:

$ python3 -m pip install [--user] poetry

Use --user if you are using a system python installation, leave it out if you are in a virtual environment or conda environment already.

Install the dependencies for building this document:

$ poetry install

Make the html:

$ poetry run make html SPHINXOPTS="-W --keep-going -n --color -j auto"

The options are enabling more warnings to make sure everything builds correctly and run the build on multiple cores.

Start the python http server to get a preview in your browser:

$ python3 -m http.server -d build/html

You then should be able to browse http://localhost:8000 and see the document.

References

The following paper describes the context of this initiative and its evolution:

• Nigro, C.; Hassan, T.; Olivera-Nieto, L. Evolution of Data Formats in Very-High-Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy. Universe 2021, 7, 374. https://doi.org/10.3390/universe7100374.