What's New in the RHESSI GUI

In > IDL 6.0, starting up the GUI is ~4 times faster now (reading in the flare catalog as it gets bigger was the problem).

A new button on the xy, image, and spectrogram plot options widget allows you to set thicker characters and axes for better looking PS plots. 

1. Contour defaults changed - percentage levels of 10,30,50,70,90 are now the default
2. Added button (called 'Copy to all overlays') in contour options widget to copy the user-defined levels and % selection from current overlay to all overlays.
3. Color of primary image contour changed to white (from red) and three optional overlays are blue, green, and cyan.
4. Labels for each contour are now generated by default.  The default label is the contour color followed by a section of the panel description, followed by the user-defined label values.  On the contour options widget, you can change the label (or blank it out) and choose whether to append the levels to the label.
5.  Fixed bug where couldn't select 'Contour overlaid on image' for primary image, and also select contour overlays.

In the Image widget, there's a new button in the Display dropdown button to plot the aspect solution.

Typing hessi_data, plotman=p returns the plotman object reference in the variable p.

The cbe_time_bin_floor parameter sets a lower limit on the size of calibrated eventlist time bins used for accumulating data in the image object.  You can set the floor for detectors you don't want to use to a high number to lower your memory requirements when making image cubes.  These can now be set in the Image Widget in the GUI (via the Collimator selection widget).

There are new options for selecting contours in the image flux tool.  There's also a new HELP button on the widget to explain the region selection options.

To accommodate the 'display bproj maps for separate detectors' feature, buttons were reorganized.  Now, that feature, as well as the Panel Display options (to show all images in an image cube), and the Parameter Summary (to show summary of current parameter settings) are found in the new 'Display ->' button pulldown menu.

On the Image Widget, there is now a pulldown button called Display-> that includes an option to display the back projection map for each selected detector in a 3x3 grid.  Since these intermediate bproj maps aren't stored, this works only for the last image made (single image, or last in a cube), and doesn't work for image cube FITS file input.

A new feature was added to the Plot_Control / Image Display Options to let you specify the thickness of the grid lines overlaid on an image.

Under File on the Main HESSI GUI, there is now an option to bring up a monitor rate widget interface.  You can also bring this up in stand-alone mode by typing hsi_ui_mon.  This interface allows you to plot the seven types of monitor rate data for your time interval.

The 'Plot Livetime' button has two new options to plot the livetime (or corrected livetime) from the monitor rate data.  The advantage of doing this is that you can quickly view a livetime profile for your time interval to help decide whether pileup needs to be corrected before you have accumulated the data in the spectrum object.  Plotting the livetime used or the livetime counter requires accumulating the spectrum data, which can be slow.  Accumulating monitor rates is much quicker.

Buttons to set rear decimation correction (in addition to the front decimation correction buttons already there) were added to the Image and Spectrum Widgets.

Buttons to use the phase stacker and set phase stacker parameters are now available in the Image Widget.

New buttons on the Spectrum Widget to plot livetime  - either the livetime used (incorporates corrections for decimation, data dropouts), or the livetime counter

When you plot separate detectors from the Spectrum Widget, only one time band (for spectrum plots) or energy bin (for time plots) can be shown.  Previously you couldn't select which bin to show - the first time or energy bin was shown.  Now you can specify which bin to show by selecting it from the time or energy pull-down widgets (i.e. whichever bin is showing in the widget will be plotted.)

New Image widget options
New features for handling image cubes
New Write Script Options
New Image movie options

In the image, spectrum, and lightcurve widgets, there is a new button called 'Write Script'.  This button lets you generate a script containing the commands to set up an object with whatever parameters you've set in the widget  (not from the command line or with the manual set option).

The GUI now handles large image cubes better.  Previously it would run out of widget resources.

Clicking  File / Retrieve/Process Data / Quicklook Images will bring up a widget interface that lets you access the quicklook image FITS files.  For any flare, you can quickly plot either the full sun image or flare images in selected energy bands as panels in the GUI, or in a separate plot window.

On time plots, you can now show Front Decimation Energy, Rear Decimation State and Energy, and Front Detectors Off State, in addition to the flags that were already available (SAA, Night, Flare, Front Decimation, and Attenuator State).

You can now set the range of image data to display.  Use the Z Limits buttons in the Image Display Options widget.  Note that for the HESSI color table, your minimum is ignored since the data range is centered on zero.

In the Multi-Panel Options widget (under Window Control), you now have the option to change certain plot properties (xyz limits, color, etc) for selected panels.  Set up a panel to have the properties you want, make sure it is the currently selected panel (red outline), then highlight multiple panels in the list of available panels, and click the 'Change Selected Plots to Current Plot' button.  If you don't see an option you want, please send a message to hessibugs and, if possible, it will be added.

Added the option to subtract a particular image from each image before making image flux calculations.  Available only from the 'Multi-Panel Options' 'Compute Image Flux' button.  Make sure the image you want to subtract is the current panel first (red outline).

The image, lightcurve, and spectrum widgets now each have a Refresh button.  If you change parameter settings from the command line, click the Refresh button to update the widget values.

Added buttons in the image, lightcurve and spectrum widget to control the new decimation, pileup, and xyoffset options.

A new button was added in the Set Parameters widget for the CLEAN algorithm to select whether to save intermediate maps in the FITS file.  The default is not to save them to reduce the size of the FITS files.  (The equivalent option from the command line is to use /full_info in the call the hsi_image__fitswrite.)

A new feature was added in the Plot_Control / XY Plot Display Options to let you specify the thickness of lines in line plots, and to specify the color for each channel.

Previously the default data type to plot in the observing summary widget was 'Corrected Count Rate'.  Now the default is 'Count Rate'.  Use the pull down menu to select other data types.

A new button, 'DIAGNOSTICS', in the image widget allows you to display the images for all detectors (either those selected or all detectors) separately.  Additional diagnostic options will be added under this button in the future.

To use this feature from the command line, type image_obj -> show_det_sep.

When you define clean boxes, there is now an option to use 'Inverse boxes' - to use the image region outside of the box instead of inside the box.  The same option is now available for image flux boxes too.

Under the File pull-down menu there are two new buttons to allow you to save the HESSI lightcurve, image, or spectrum object used in the GUI in a .geny file (similar to but more flexible than an IDL save file) and to restore an object from a .geny file into the GUI.

Saving to and restoring from a .geny file produces an exact, complete copy of the object and its state.  You can start a new IDL session, restore an object and continue working with it.

To save and restore objects at the command line, use the new obj_save and obj_restore commands.

From the spectrum widget, you can now:
1. Plot detectors separately
2. Plot by channel number instead of energy
3. When binning by channel number, use channel edges in keV for plot x-axis instead of channel number.

Added option to plot Counts, Count Rate or Flux (or Photons, Photon Rate, or Photon Flux if semi-calibrated is selected).  Previously always plotted flux.

Added new search criteria to flare selection widget.

Previously when you selected a new observation time interval or flare, the image time was automatically set to be 4s at the peak of the flare, and the xyoffset was automatically set to the position of the flare in the flare catalog. 

Now, if the image time(s) you've selected still fall within the new observation time interval, then they are not changed.  If they don't, then the image time is set to 4s at the peak of the flare.  If there is no flare in your obs time interval, then the image time is set to the first 4s of the obs time interval.

And if the flare number doesn't change when you select a new obs time interval, then the program will not attempt to change the xyoffset.  If the flare number does change, then the xyoffset will be set to the flare position in the catalog only if the value is not [0.,0.].  Currently, the flare catalog positions are all [0.,0.].  We expect to be able to insert the real flare positions in the catalog in early Spring 2003.

Also, added a button to quickly set the image time interval to 4s at the peak of the selected flare.

New option to animate any series of panels.  Accessible through the Window Control / Multi-Panel Options widget.  Use the new search feature to find the panels you want.  You can show a series of light curves, spectra, or images from any source.  Examples: show a TRACE and RHESSI image of an event - the animator will 'blink' back and forth between the two;  show the evolution of a spectrum.

The View Image Movie button in the File pull-down menu is still there.  It has many more options for showing movies, but is limited to showing RHESSI images as movies.

The Configure Panels button in the Window Control pull-down menu was renamed to Multi-Panel Options.  In the Multi-Panel Options widget, a search feature was added to help you select panels easily.

1. GUI now has the option to overlay a solar heliographic grid on images.  You can choose the spacing and color of the grid lines. 

2. Added user control for the color of the solar limb displayed on images (default is now yellow). 

3.  Added the option to translate the original image in X and Y (previously could only translate the overlays).

The GUI now remembers the obs_time_interval and image colors used in your last GUI session and will initialize the GUI with those defaults (unless you pass in keyword arguments that set the time or color (flarenum, obs_time_interval, colortable) to the hessi command.) 

Note:  It only remembers an obs_time_interval that has been SET in the main GUI.  And it only remembers times and colors if you start the GUI from the same working directory.

Made it easier to set the Observation Time Interval directly from the Imaging, Spectrum, and Lightcurve Widgets by adding a Change button in those interfaces.  Also added some buttons to the Obs Time Interval Selection Widget to make it possible to leave that widget up even after transferring the new Obs Time Interval to the Main GUI and the HESSI objects.

Added option to plot RHESSI spectrograms from Spectrum Widget.  Also, Phoenix spectrograms in the Synoptic Data Archive can now be plotted.

Note:  The spectrogram plotting options are limited.  You can not create PS files or print spectrogram plots currently.

Added option to plot corrected count rates from Observing Summary data.

Added option to plot integral.  Click Plot_Control / XY Plot Display Options / Integral

Previously when importing a RHESSI image FITS file, the control parameters for the image object in the GUI were set to the control parameters retrieved from the file.  Now the GUI parameters are not affected when a FITS file is imported.  The only effect is that new plot panel(s) are made for the image(s) in the FITS file.

There is a new button under the file pulldown menu in the GUI and in PLOTMAN that will try to help you recover after a crash that left widgets and graphics in a bad state.  It will try to restore graphics parameters and widget event handlers to normal, and will present you with a list of widgets (that might be hung) that you can kill.  Be careful not to kill any you need.

New option to save output from image flux calculations in a file, either creating a new file, or appending to an existing file.  Format is compatible with importing into EXCEL.  (The Image Flux button is found under the  Plot_Control pulldown menu).

New option to automatically compute image flux for multiple images (under WIndow_Control, Configure...). 

New option to use contour levels to define regions for flux calculations.

Added additional calculations to the output of the image flux interface.  Added centroid, standard deviation, peak location and value to the output.

Can now select front or rear (but not both) detectors in image widget.

Added options for defining contours by percent, and changing contour color and thickness.

Added option to use contour levels to define clean boxes.

Added a What's New button under the Help button. Opens a browser with this list of recent additions to the GUI.

Changed 'Make and Display Images' button to 'Make Images and Send to:' with options to send images to the GUI or a FITS file or both.

Previously near the top of each plot panel there was a pulldown menu that allowed you to close the panel, maximize it, send it to a new PLOTMAN window, or delete it. For RHESSI data there was also a Summarize button in each plot panel. Those buttons in the plot panels are now gone, and there is a new button called Current Panel under the Window_Control button that controls those actions.

Redesigned Configure Plot Panels Interface (reached by clicking Window_Control / Configure...). Widget now allows for selecting multiple plot panels and sending them to plot files, printer, save files, or FITS files.  There's also an option to create an image cube FITS file from selected panels.

Added ability to read an image cube FITS file into the GUI. Each image in file becomes a panel in the GUI. Also added ability to create an image cube FITS file from selected panels in the Configure Plot Panels Widget (reached by clicking Window_Control / Configure...).

Added option to write IDL save files for lightcurve, image, and spectrum data.  Click File /Export data / Write IDL save file. (or from command line: lc_obj -> savwrite)

The default GUI session is a fresh session (i.e. typing hessi is the same as typing hessi,/init).  Type hessi, /previous to restore the previous settings of the object parameters and the plot options.

Added option to plot derivative.  Click Plot_Control / XY Plot Display Options / Derivative

Added ability to change color or other plot settings for all current plots in the GUI, and to change defaults for future plots in the GUI.  Options are accessed two ways: 1) through the Plot_Control / XY Defaults and Image Defaults options, and 2) on the Plot_Control / XY Plot Display Options and Image Display Options widgets, when you click Accept and Close, options are available for applying the options selected to more than just the current plot.

Added options for showing the observing summary flags, (Night, SAA, Attenuator State, Flare) on any time plot.  Accessible two ways.  For any

Added option to view image profiles at any angle through image (not just across rows or columns)

Added option to display location of RHESSI flares on an image that is displayed in the GUI (can be any type of data, not just RHESSI).  Any flares within 10 days of image time are displayed.  On GUI main menu bar, click Show_HESSI / Flare Locations on Image.

Pass any object parameters passed in on the hessi call to the hessi objects. 
For example, hessi, as_spin_period=4.33

Added a user label option for image plots. User can enter a text string in Plot_Control / Image Display Options / User Label.  String will be printed vertically on the right side of the plot.  Can be used to identify details about how you made the image.

Enable passing the level-0 FITS filename into the GUI on the call to hessi.
For example, hessi, filename='c:\hessidata\hsi_20020220_022200_001.fits'

Added option to mark the RHESSI pointing axis on image plots.  Click Plot_Control / Image Display Options / Mark Pointing.  If the pointing axis is not within the current plot window, the direction to the pointing axis will be displayed.  This is not currently available for flight data because the quicklook pointing information is not in the files yet.