Heasoft Installation #

HEASOFT (High Energy Astrophysics Software) is a comprehensive software package developed by NASA’s High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) for analyzing data from X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy missions. The suite includes tools for data reduction, spectral analysis, timing analysis, and image processing from missions like Chandra, XMM-Newton, Swift, NuSTAR, and many others. It provides both command-line utilities and interactive analysis environments, with core components like XSPEC for spectral fitting, XIMAGE for image analysis, and mission-specific tools for various high-energy observatories. HEASOFT is freely available and runs on Unix/Linux and macOS systems, making it an essential toolkit for researchers studying black holes, neutron stars, supernova remnants, and other high-energy astrophysical phenomena.

I will explain the installation in Ubuntu 24.

Download installation file #

Download the source code from the link. I recommend that you download the Complete HEASoft source code (all mission & general-use software) from the page stated above.

Then extract it and put that extracted folder in a safe location where HEASOFT is to be installed.

Prerequisites installation #

Run the command below in the terminal.

sudo apt-get -y install libreadline-dev libncurses5-dev ncurses-dev curl \
libcurl4 libcurl4-gnutls-dev xorg-dev make gcc g++ gfortran perl-modules \
libdevel-checklib-perl libfile-which-perl python3-dev python3-pip python3-setuptools \
python3-astropy python3-numpy python3-scipy python3-matplotlib

I recommend installing gedit in the system. Thus, run the command below.

sudo apt install gedit

Now open the terminal in the root folder or just click the terminal icon. Write the variables below in the .bashrc file. Open the .bashrc file using the command below.

gedit .bashrc

Now write the text in the .bashrc file.

export CC=/usr/bin/gcc
export CXX=/usr/bin/g++
export FC=/usr/bin/gfortran
export PERL=/usr/bin/perl
export PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3

Software installation #

Now go to the folder where you have extracted the HEASOFT source code. Go to the BUILD_DIR folder and now open the terminal in this folder. First, do the configuration, so run the code below in that terminal.

./configure > config.txt 2>&1

After configuration, open the config.txt file and check the end of the file. For successful configuration, the file ends with Finished. Now we need to build the software and thus run the code below.

make > build.txt 2>&1

It will take a longer time, maybe 40 minutes to 60 minutes. Check the long build.txt file; successful building ends with finished word. Now you need to install it. Run the code below for installation.

make install > install.txt 2>&1

Similarly, check install.txt for successful installation. If everything goes well, it will generate a platform folder inside the heasoft folder. The folder should look like x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-libc2.39.

CALDB installation #

We need to install the calibration database for the system and spacecraft. Download the software caldb files from the link. Create a folder named caldb in a safe location. Extract the software caldb file and copy the software folder inside the caldb folder. Create another folder named data inside the caldb folder. Now, inside the data folder, you need to download the mission-specific caldb files. The mission-specific caldb files can be downloaded from the link. For example, if you download the NuStar caldb files and extract them, copy the nustar folder inside that data folder. Similar way, download all the needed mission-specific caldb files.

Variables initialization #

Now open a new terminal and open the .bashrc file using the command gedit .bashrc. Now write the text in the file mentioned below.

export HEADAS=your_installation_path/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-libc2.39
alias heainit=". $HEADAS/headas-init.sh"

export CALDB='your_caldb_path/caldb'
alias CALDB='source $CALDB/software/tools/caldbinit.sh'
export CALDBCONFIG='your_caldb_path/caldb/software/tools/caldb.config'
export CALDBALIAS='your_caldb_path/caldb/software/tools/alias_config.fits'
source $CALDB/software/tools/caldbinit.sh

Make sure to change the your_installation_path and your_caldb_path according to your installation. Now save the file and close the terminal. Open a new terminal and type heainit to initialize the HEASOFT. To use any tool of HEASOFT, you need to heainit every time in the terminal.