Output files

The output files of PlatoSim is in a so-called HDF5 format. The following figure shows the structure of the HDF5 file:

_images/platosim_structureOfHDF5.png

The blue boxes show the top-level directories, which can contain information about the input parameters (red box and orange boxes), pixel maps (green boxes), or information about the detected stars / information about the payload (purple boxes):

  • The first level shows the group InputParameters contains a copy of the configuration parameters from the YAML file. Every HDF5 output file has the Git version of the software saved should you need it.

  • The second level shows all the groups that contain image data for every exposure. These are the Images, SmearingMaps, BiasMaps, and ThroughputMaps.

  • The third level shows all the groups that contain single frame image data. These are the PSF, BackgroundMap, FlatField, and the CTI. Notice that the latter contains a map for each CTI trap specy that is included in the used model (hence 4 species for the Short model).

  • The fourth level shows all the groups that contains a mix of stellar parameters, payload parameters, and coordinates. The group StarCatalog contains the sky coordinates, the pixel coordinates, and the focal plane coordinates of all the stars that were detected during any exposure. The starIDs map the ID from the input starCatalog that is supplied with the configuration. The two groups ASC and Telescope contains time series of the displacement of the platform and camera, respectively. The groups StarPositions, PointLikeGhostPositions, and ExtendedGhostPositions contain information about the different source images produced, and Cosmics contains information about the cosmic rays detected within the subfield. The output structure of the four latter groups depend on the GroupByExposure setting.

We recommend you to use the command-line tool argos (which is part of PlatoSim’s default Poetry installation) to inspect the output files for quick-look purposes. Open a HDF5 with:

argos <outputFileName>.hdf5

To extract information from the HDF5 file we strongly recommend you to use PlatoSim’s build-in Python functionalities. We show how these tools work in our Python Tuturials.