Summary
Constructing synthetic X-ray observations from hydrodynamical simulations and other data sources is made possible with a combination of the yt analysis toolkit with a number of other astronomical Python libraries.
Description
X-ray astronomy is a rapidly expanding field, thanks to the many observations of existing observatories, such as Chandra and XMM-Newton, and the anticipation of high-resolution spectral data from upcoming missions such as Astro-H and Athena+. Understanding these observations and connecting them to astrophysical mechanisms requires not only detailed modeling of the underlying physics but reliable reproduction of the observed phenomena. I present a method of creating synthetic X-ray observations from numerical simulations, which leverages several astronomical Python libraries, including yt, AstroPy, and PyXspec. I will describe the method of generating the observations, the Python packages used, and applications of the method, including connecting observations of galaxy clusters with MHD simulations and preparing simulations for observation proposals.