Ctapipe - Prototype Open Event Reconstruction Pipeline for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) is the next-generation ground-based gamma-ray observatory currently under construction. It will improve over the current generation of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) by a factor of five to ten in sensitivity and it will be able to observe the whole sky from a combination of two sites: a northern site in La Palma, Spain, and a southern one in Paranal, Chile. CTAO will also be the first open ground-based gamma-ray observatory. Accordingly, the CTAO data processing pipeline is developed as open-source software and ctapipe will be a core package therein. The event reconstruction pipeline accepts raw data of the telescopes and processes it to produce suitable input for the higher-level science tools. Its primary tasks include reconstructing the physical properties of each recorded air shower and providing the corresponding instrument response functions. ctapipe is a python framework providing algorithms and command-line tools to facilitate raw data calibration, image extraction, image parametrization and event reconstruction. Its current main focus is the analysis of simulated data but it has also been successfully applied for the analysis of data obtained with the CTA prototype telescopes, and first science results have now been obtained by the LST-1 collaboration using ctapipe. A plugin system also allows the processing of nonCTA data. Recent updates, including event reconstruction using machine learning and a new plugin system as well as the roadmap towards a 1.0 release will be presented.