Please read CXC Director Dr. Pat Slane's A Letter to the Community regarding NASA's plans to decommission Chandra.

Manuals & Memos

The list below provides links to the CIAO manuals. We also maintain presentations from the CIAO Workshops.

About Chandra

• An X-ray Data Primer: What I Wish I Knew when Starting X-Ray Astronomy

• A Chandra Pocket Guide

• The Proposer's Observatory Guide

General

• Chandra Coordinate Systems:

  • Imaging (PDF, 25 pages)
  • Aspect Calibration (PDF, 9 pages)
  • Dispersed Spectra (PDF, 5 pages)
  • Coordinate Systems Manual (PDF, 68 pages)

• Data Model:

  • Introduction (PDF, 34 pages)
  • Principal DM Tools (PDF, 43 pages)
  • Virtual File Syntax (PDF, 36 pages)
  • Using the ASCII Kernel (PDF, 8 pages)

• Data Products Guide (HTML)

• The Chandra ABC Guide to Pileup (PDF, 26 pages)

Imaging

• Chandra Coordinate Systems: Imaging (PDF, 25 pages)

• Detect Manual (HTML) or PDF (190 pages)

  • Detect Manual data (tar.gz, 32 MB)

• An Introduction to Exposure Maps (PDF, 12 pages)

• Chandra PSF Library (PDF, 16 pages)

• SAOImage ds9 Reference Manual (HTML)

• Transformation, Convolution, and Deconvolution (PDF, 79 pages)

• How & Why (or Why Not) to Combine Data (PDF, 7 pages)

Grating Spectroscopy

• Chandra Coordinate Systems: Dispersed Spectra (PDF , 5 pages)

• Analysis Guide for Chandra High Resolution Spectroscopy (HTML)

• How & Why (or Why Not) to Combine Data (PDF, 7 pages)

Scripting

• Python Programming Language website

• The Open Astronomy discourse site