Supported data formats

ctaplot is not tight to a specific data format as most functions accept arrays as input.

However, gammaboard reads results directly from HDF5 files. Two file structures are currently supported:

GammaBoard file format

Datasets in the HDF5 file are tables that can be opened with

pandas.read_hdf(filename, key=dataset_name)

  • data - mandatory

Contains the reconstructed values

Columns names:

`mc_energy`: float
`reco_energy`: float
`mc_impact_x`: float
`mc_impact_y`: float
`reco_impact_x`: float
`reco_impact_y`: float
`mc_altitude`: float
`mc_azimuth`: float
`reco_altitude`: float
`reco_azimuth`: float
`mc_particle`: int 0 or 1
`reco_particle`: int 0 or 1
`reco_hadroness` or `reco_gammaness`: float between 0 and 1
example of GammaBoard data table in HDF5 file

  • triggered_events - optional

Single column table containing the list of triggered events energies:

Column name:

`mc_trig_energies`

  • simuluation/run_config - mandatory to plot the effective area

Contains the simulation information from each simulation file used (1 file per line):

Column names:

`energy_range_max`
`energy_range_min`
`max_alt`
`max_scatter_range`
`min_alt`
`num_showers`
`shower_reuse`
`spectral_index`

lstchain DL2 file format

As generated by lstchain>=v0.6

Datasets:

  • dl2/event/telescope/parameters/LST_LSTCam

Contains the reconstructed values

Column names: same as the GammaBoard format (see above) OR :

`mc_alt`: float
`mc_az`: float
`mc_core_distance`: float
`mc_core_x`: float
`mc_core_y`: float
`mc_energy`: float
`mc_h_first_int`: float
`mc_type`: : int following the simtel convention: 0 for gamma, 1 for electron, 101 for protons
`mc_x_max`: float
`reco_energy`: float
`reco_src_x`: float
`reco_src_y`: float
`reco_alt`: float
`reco_az`: float
`reco_type`: int following the simtel convention: 0 for gamma, 1 for electron, 101 for protons
`gammaness`: float between 0 and 1

  • simulation/run_config - mandatory to plot the effective area

Contains the simulation information from each simulation file used (1 file per line):

Column names:

`energy_range_max`
`energy_range_min`
`max_alt`
`max_scatter_range`
`min_alt`
`num_showers`
`shower_reuse`
`spectral_index`

Note: in the future, ctaplot will support the official CTA DL1 and DL2 file formats.

GammaBoard experiments directory structure

GammaBoard loads experiments data from a single directory where all experiments are stored You may want to export the path to this directory as:

GAMMABOARD_DATA=path_to_the_data_directory

In this directory, each sub-directory is an experiment containing:

  • experiment_name.h5 : Mandatory - file containing the reconstructed quantities as described above.

  • experiment_name.json : Optional - file containing information regarding the experiment. It can be anything compliant with the json format.

Example of GAMMABOARD_DATA directory

GAMMABOARD_DATA
    ├── exp_01
    |    ├── exp_01.h5
    |    └── exp_01.json
    └── the_awesome_exp
         ├── the_awesome_exp.h5
         └── the_awesome_exp.json