Scripts Module Overview

The Scripts Module (cwitools.scripts) represents the intended primary usage-mode of CWITools for most users. It provides a number of high-level functions which can be strung together to form a pipeline. Unlike functions in the core modules (which typically take HDU objects as input and return updated HDU objects), these scripts read and write FITS files directly, such that each one provides a complete analysis step (e.g. load input cubes, crop, save cropped cubes).

Console

For users who prefer to work from the console/terminal or write bash scripts, these scripts can be executed directly from the command-line. Upon installation of CWITools, a number of aliases of the form cwi_XXX, where XXX is the script name, are added to the user’s environment.

Here is how you would load two FITS data cubes (cube1.fits and cube2.fits), crop them to a wavelength range of 4000A-5000A and save the cropped cubes with the extension “.cropped.fits” from the command line:

$ cwi_crop cube1.fits cube2.fits -wcrop 4000 5000 -ext .cropped.fits

Each of these scripts comes with a help menu, which can be accessed by running the script with the -h flag (e.g. cwi_crop -h).

Python Environment

For users who prefer to work with Python notebooks or scripts, the core CWITools scripts can be imported directly into a Python session. Similar to the command line version, all scripts are imported with the format from cwitools.scripts import cwi_XXX where XXX is the script name.

Here how you would load two FITS data cubes (cube1.fits and cube2.fits), crop them to a wavelength range of 4000A-5000A and save the cropped cubes with the extension “.cropped.fits” using Python:

>>> from cwitools.scripts import cwi_crop
>>> cwi_crop(["cube1.fits", "cube2.fits"], wcrop=(4000, 5000), ext=".cropped.fits")

For details on the parameters of these functions, see the documentation here: Scripts Module (cwitools.scripts).