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 0.2:

• HTML at https://gamma-astro-data-formats.readthedocs.io/en/v0.2/
• PDF at https://media.readthedocs.org/pdf/gamma-astro-data-formats/v0.2/gamma-astro-data-formats.pdf

For v0.2 we also archived the sources of the spec as well as a rendered PDF and HTML version here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1409830 To cite that version, you can use the bibtex entry here.

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.