The ISOPHOT Interactive Analysis software (PIA) has been freely distributed for ISOPHOT data reduction and analysis for approximately one year. It has been jointly developed by the ESA Astrophysics Division (responsible for planning, direction and execution) and the ISOPHOT consortium scientific institutes.
The software was designed as a user friendly tool for use by the instrument team in the ISOPHOT calibration during and after the ISO mission, and as an interactive tool for ISOPHOT data analysis by general observers. This concept takes into account the commonalities between data reduction for calibration and for astronomical observations, trying to create a more powerful tool for data analysis than the automatic data reduction pipeline.
PIA comprises around 1800 routines and is based around a graphical user interface allowing easy access to all the steps necessary to input, process and visualise ISOPHOT data. It supports the majority of the ISOPHOT observing modes and corresponding data products, as well as the calibration files needed for commanding the instrument and for performing data analysis.
Users may access data from all the different ISOPHOT sub-systems and from all the different levels of data reduction - from the raw data to the final calibrated images, spectra, multi-filter, or multi-aperture photometry data products. Processing can be carried out fully interactively, allowing for inspection of every bit, or fully automatically, for speeding up reduction of long and complicated observations. Dedicated menus for testing and setting all the parameters used for data reduction are implemented, giving a major advantage compared to the pipeline software, which runs on fixed parameters.
The PIA User Manual is written in hypertext format. It can be used either on-line through the users' browser or from PIA, where individual sections are reached via context sensitive help from the different PIA windows. The User Manual describes the graphical interfaces, includes a tutorial on data processing, describes the data structures definitions, etc. In addition there is documentation for every PIA routine, which can be recalled via the IDL on-line help system.
PIA, and IDL based-package, is available for various platforms running IDL (from version 3.6). At the time of writing this issue of ISO INFO (mid-July) the most recent version of PIA was V6.4. PIA, and further information, can be obtained from the official PIA homepage
(http://www.iso.vilspa.esa.es/manuals/PHT/pia/),
or from the ISOPHOT Data Center at MPIA,
http://www.mpia-hd.mpg.de/ISO/welcome.html
Heidelberg also gives active support to ISOPHOT users via the e-mail address:
phthelp@orion.mpia-hd.mpg.de.