Simulating X-ray Observations with Python
  X-ray astronomy is an important tool in the astrophysicist's toolkit to
investigate high-energy astrophysical phenomena. Theoretical numerical
simulations of astrophysical sources are fully three-dimensional
representations of physical quantities such as density, temperature, and
pressure, whereas astronomical observations are two-dimensional projections of
the emission generated via mechanisms dependent on these quantities. To bridge
the gap between simulations and observations, algorithms for generating
synthetic observations of simulated data have been developed. We present an
implementation of such an algorithm in the yt analysis software package. We
describe the underlying model for generating the X-ray photons, the important
role that yt and other Python packages play in its implementation, and present
a detailed workable example of the creation of simulated X-ray observations.
