The MARX Package

Introduction

MARX is a suite of programs created by the MIT/CXC group and designed to enable the user to simulate the on-orbit performance of the Chandra X-ray Observatory (AXAF). MARX provides a detailed ray-trace simulation of how Chandra responds to a variety of astrophysical sources and can generate standard FITS events files and images as output. It contains detailed models for the HRMA mirror system onboard Chandra as well as the HETG and LETG gratings and all focal plane detectors. With the appropriate configuration, MARX can also be used to simulate calibration data taken at the XRCF facility in Huntsville, AL.

A recent version of MARX is distributed with the Chandra CIAO software.

Documentation

Documentation is at http://space.mit.edu/ASC/marx/index.html

Initialisation

MARX executables will be installed in /usr/local/bin/ - so as long as
/usr/local/bin is in your path, you don't need to do anything.

MARX documentation will be installed in /usr/local/share/doc/marx/
MARX data files will be installed in /usr/local/share/marx/data/
MARX parameter files will be installed in /usr/local/share/marx/pfiles/

Version

The current version of MARX is MARX 5.3.3.

Rhys Morris

Last modified: Thursday, 14 December 2017