XMM-Newton Users Handbook

A..2 SciSim Graphical User Interface

SciSim can be executed from both the command line and from a specially developed set of GUIs. These GUIs pop-up parameters dialogues for the different components of SciSim. The top-level SciSim GUI is presented in Fig. 106. It offers several click-on buttons for choosing operations.

Figure 106: The top-level GUI of the XMM-Newton Science Simulator (SciSim), presenting a field of view on the sky that will display any emitting sources that can be chosen from catalogues or defined by the user.

• ``File''

  This offers various options to import or save source, configuration and default parameters. In particular, the default configurations for the three XMM-Newton X-ray telescopes (Telescope 1, 2 and 3) can be accessed under this pull-down menu. These default configurations are recommended for general users and standard simulations (see the threads mentioned at the beginning of this Appendix)

• ``Sources''

  Under this option the user manually edit model sources, simulate a random source distribution, import sources from catalogues and influence the properties of the modelled background.

• ``Configure''

  This spawns the instrument configuration GUI, which is used for configuring SciSim, see below.

• ``Simulate''

  Start/stop a simulation.

• ``Help''

  Information on the SciSim release version and the online help. Note that, in order to use the online help facility of SciSim from the GUI, a Netscape Browser must be running.

Moving the mouse onto widgets showing parameters whose values can be typed in from the keyboard (e.g., RA,DEC) will tip a very brief description of the parameter and the units SciSim expects for it.