PyFACT: Python and FITS analysis for Cherenkov telescopes

Ground-based very-high energy (VHE; E>100 GeV) gamma-ray astronomy is growing from being conducted by small teams in closed collaborations into a full-fledged branch of astronomy with open observatories. This is best illustrated by the number of known sources: it increased by one order of magnitude in the past ten years, from 10 in the year 2000 to more than 100 in 2010. It is expected that this trend will continue with the next-generation instrument Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). This transformation has a profound impact on the data format and analysis of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs). Up to now, IACT data analysis was an internal task performed by specialists with no public access to the data or software. In the future, a large community of VHE astronomers from different scientific topics should be enabled to work with the data. Ease of use, compatibility, and integration with existing astronomy standards and tools will be key. In this contribution, a collection of Python tools for the analysis of data in FITS format (PyFACT; Python and FITS Analysis for Cherenkov Telescopes) is presented, which connects with existing tools like xspec, sherpa, and ds9. The package is available as open source (https://github.com/mraue/pyfact, comments and contributions welcome). Advantages of the chosen ansatz are discussed and implications for future observatories and data archival are presented.