Notes

Setting default values

Several parameter values can be set to define the way ChiantiPy behaves. The following parameter values can be set in your ~username/.chianti/chiantirc file. These are:

wavelength
this parameter has not been fully implemented. The default is angstrom. In the future, nanometers (nm) and kilo volts (kev) will be implemented.
flux
acceptable values are energy and photon and these govern emissivities and intensities. the default value is energy.
abundfile
the name of the abundance file. Acceptable values are any of the file names in XUVTOP/abundance, such as cosmic_1973_allen. The default value is sun_photospheric_1998_grevesse which includes the abundances of Grevesse and Sauval, 1998, Space Science Reviews, 85, 161.
ioneqfile
the name of the ionization equilibrium file. Acceptable values are any of the file names in XUVTOP/ioneq such as arnaud_raymond, arnaud_rothenflug, or chianti. The default value is chianti which includes the ionization equilibrium calculations of Dere, et al., 2009, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 498, 915 and are considered to be based on the best ionization and recombination rates currently available.

Setting minAbund in spectrum calculations

When calculation spectra with spectrum or mspectrum, it is often useful to set the “minAbund” keyword which governs the minimum abundance of any element included in the calculation. Below is a list of elemental abundances for the elements through zinc and the elements that will be included by several value of “minAbund”.

Element Abundance minAbund
1.e-6 1.e-5 1.e-4
H 1.00e+00
He 8.51e-02
Li 1.26e-11      
Be 2.51e-11      
B 3.55e-10      
C 3.31e-04
N 8.32e-05
 
O 6.76e-04
F 3.63e-08      
Ne 1.20e-04
Na 2.14e-06
   
Mg 3.80e-05
 
Al 2.95e-06
   
Si 3.55e-05
 
P 2.82e-07      
S 2.14e-05
 
Cl 3.16e-07      
Ar 2.51e-06
   
K 1.32e-07      
Ca 2.29e-06
   
Sc 1.48e-09      
Ti 1.05e-07      
V 1.00e-08      
Cr 4.68e-07      
Mn 2.45e-07      
Fe 3.16e-05
 
Co 8.32e-08      
Ni 1.78e-06
   
Cu 1.62e-08      
Zn 3.98e-08      

It shoud be noted that CHIANTI does not include a complete set of data for every ion of every element in this list.