VTSCat: VERITAS Data Catalog
Located at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) in southern Arizona, VERITAS commenced operations using all four telescopes in 2007. Employing the imaging atmospheric Cherenkov observation technique, VERITAS detects VHE gamma rays through the Cherenkov radiation generated in air showers initiated by the interaction of the primary gamma-rays in Earth's atmosphere. The Cherenkov photons are detected using photomultiplier tubes. The stereoscopic use of 4 telescopes leads to improved shower reconstruction and background rejection.
VTSCat: VERITAS Data Catalog Sameer Patel t y p e : p l p a r a m e t e r s : norm : { v a l : 4 . 1 7 , e r r : 0 . 2 4 , s c a l e : 1 e -11 , u n i t : cm-2 s -1 TeV-1} i n d e x : { v a l : 2 . 2 6 , e r r : 0 . 0 6 } e _ r e f : { v a l : 1 , u n i t : TeV}
The VERITAS Data Catalog (hereafter refered to as VTSCat), is a collection of all the data used in more than 100 papers published by the VERITAS collaboration. The majority of the catalog is compiled from the results of known gamma-ray sources but also includes some results from dark matter studies, measurements of the extragalactic background light, cosmic ray spectra, and upper limits on candidate gamma-ray sources.
Listing 2: Mrk 501 light curve data in [1] # %ECSV 0 . 9 # ---# d a t a t y p e : # -{ name : e_min , u n i t : TeV , d a t a t y p e : f l o a t 6 4 } # -{ name : t i m e , u n i t : MJD, d a t a t y p e : f l o a t 6 4 } # -{ name : f l u x , u n i t : cm-2 s -1 , d a t a t y p e : f l o a t 6 4 } # -{ name : f l u x _ e r r , u n i t : cm-2 s -1 , d a t a t y p e : f l o a t 6 Following closely in the footsteps of the structure of GammaCat, VTSCat consists of high level machine and human readable data files in different formats as described in Table 1. Listings 1, 2 & 3 show the formats of some of the data files while Figure 2 shows quicklook plots. An example use of the VTSCat data is shown in Figure 3 which presents all of the spectral energy distributions of Mrk 501 measured by VERITAS.
In this proceeding we have presented the VTSCat, an actively updated, publicly accesible and a machine/human readable catalog of the results from the VERITAS array. It is our hope that in making 12 years of VERITAS data more easily accessible, it can be easily integrated and help to enhance the work of future publications within the community.
https://gamma-cat.readthedocs.io/