MGCosmoPop implements a hierarchical Bayesian inference method for constraining the background cosmological history, in particular the Hubble constant, together with modified gravitational-wave propagation and binary black holes population models (mass, redshift and spin distributions) with gravitational-wave data. It includes support for loading and analyzing data from the GWTC-3 catalog as well as for generating injections to evaluate selection effects, and features a module to run in parallel on clusters.

mgcnn is a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture for classifying standard and modified gravity (MG) cosmological models based on the weak-lensing convergence maps they produce. It is implemented in Keras using TensorFlow as the backend. The code offers three options for the noise flag, which correspond to noise standard deviations, and additional options for the number of training iterations and epochs. Confusion matrices and evaluation metrics (loss function and validation accuracy) are saved as numpy arrays in the generated output/ directory after each iteration.

CAMB is a public Fortran 90 code written by Antony Lewis and Anthony Challinor for evaluating cosmological observables. MGCAMB is a modified version of CAMB in which the linearized Einstein equations of General Relativity (GR) are modified. MGCAMB can also be used in CosmoMC to fit different modified-gravity (MG) models to data.

MGB (Marxist Ghost Buster) attacks spectral classification by using an interactive comparison with spectral libraries. It allows the user to move along the two traditional dimensions of spectral classification (spectral subtype and luminosity classification) plus the two additional ones of rotation index and spectral peculiarities. Double-lined spectroscopic binaries can also be fitted using a combination of two standards. The code includes OB2500 v2.0, a standard grid of blue-violet R ~ 2500 spectra of O stars from the Galactic O-Star Spectroscopic Survey, but other grids can be added to MGB.

MG-PICOLA is a modified version of L-PICOLA (ascl:1507.004) that extends the COLA approach for simulating cosmological structure formation to theories that exhibit scale-dependent growth. It can compute matter power-spectra (CDM and total), redshift-space multipole power-spectra P0,P2,P4 and do halofinding on the fly.

MG-MAMPOSSt extends the MAMPOSSt code (ascl:2203.020), which performs Bayesian fits of models of mass and velocity anisotropy profiles to the distribution of tracers in projected phase space, to handle modified gravity models and constrain its parameters. It implements two distinct types of gravity modifications: general chameleon (including $f(\mathcal{R})$ models), and beyond Horndeski gravity (Vainshtein screening). MG-MAMPOSSt efficently explores the parameter space either by computing the likelihood over a multi-dimensional grid of points or by performing a simple Metropolis-Hastings MCMC. The code requires a Fortran90 compiler or higher and makes use of the getdist package (ascl:1910.018) to plot the marginalized distributions in the MCMC mode.

The Meudon PDR code computes the atomic and molecular structure of interstellar clouds. It can be used to study the physics and chemistry of diffuse clouds, photodissociation regions (PDRs), dark clouds, or circumstellar regions. The model computes the thermal balance of a stationary plane-parallel slab of gas and dust illuminated by a radiation field and takes into account heating processes such as the photoelectric effect on dust, chemistry, cosmic rays, etc. and cooling resulting from infrared and millimeter emission of the abundant species. Chemistry is solved for any number of species and reactions. Once abundances of atoms and molecules and level excitation of the most important species have been computed at each point, line intensities and column densities can be deduced.

MeSsI performs an automatic classification between merging and relaxed clusters. This method was calibrated using mock catalogues constructed from the millennium simulation, and performs the classification using some machine learning techniques, namely random forest for classification and mixture of gaussians for the substructure identification.

MESS is a Monte Carlo simulation IDL code which uses either the results of the statistical analysis of the properties of discovered planets, or the results of the planet formation theories, to build synthetic planet populations fully described in terms of frequency, orbital elements and physical properties. They can then be used to either test the consistency of their properties with the observed population of planets given different detection techniques or to actually predict the expected number of planets for future surveys. It can be used to probe the physical and orbital properties of a putative companion within the circumstellar disk of a given star and to test constrain the orbital distribution properties of a potential planet population around the members of the TW Hydrae association. Finally, using in its predictive mode, the synergy of future space and ground-based telescopes instrumentation has been investigated to identify the mass-period parameter space that will be probed in future surveys for giant and rocky planets. A Python version of this code, Exo-DMC (ascl:2010.008), is available.

Meso-NH is the non-hydrostatic mesoscale atmospheric model of the French research community jointly developed by the Laboratoire d'Aérologie (UMR 5560 UPS/CNRS) and by CNRM (UMR 3589 CNRS/Météo-France). Meso-NH incorporates a non-hydrostatic system of equations for dealing with scales ranging from large (synoptic) to small (large eddy) scales while calculating budgets and has a complete set of physical parameterizations for the representation of clouds and precipitation. It is coupled to the surface model SURFEX for representation of surface atmosphere interactions by considering different surface types (vegetation, city​​, ocean, lake) and allows a multi-scale approach through a grid-nesting technique. Meso-NH is versatile, vectorized, parallelized, and operates in 1D, 2D or 3D; it is coupled with a chemistry module (including gas-phase, aerosol, and aqua-phase components) and a lightning module, and has observation operators that compare model output directly with satellite observations, radar, lidar and GPS.

MeshLab processes and edits 3D triangular meshes. It includes tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering, texturing and converting meshes, and offers features for processing raw data produced by 3D digitization tools and devices and for preparing models for 3D printing.

Stellar physics and evolution calculations enable a broad range of research in astrophysics. Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) is a suite of open source libraries for a wide range of applications in computational stellar astrophysics. A newly designed 1-D stellar evolution module, MESA star, combines many of the numerical and physics modules for simulations of a wide range of stellar evolution scenarios ranging from very-low mass to massive stars, including advanced evolutionary phases. MESA star solves the fully coupled structure and composition equations simultaneously. It uses adaptive mesh refinement and sophisticated timestep controls, and supports shared memory parallelism based on OpenMP. Independently usable modules provide equation of state, opacity, nuclear reaction rates, and atmosphere boundary conditions. Each module is constructed as a separate Fortran 95 library with its own public interface. Examples include comparisons to other codes and show evolutionary tracks of very low mass stars, brown dwarfs, and gas giant planets; the complete evolution of a 1 Msun star from the pre-main sequence to a cooling white dwarf; the Solar sound speed profile; the evolution of intermediate mass stars through the thermal pulses on the He-shell burning AGB phase; the interior structure of slowly pulsating B Stars and Beta Cepheids; evolutionary tracks of massive stars from the pre-main sequence to the onset of core collapse; stars undergoing Roche lobe overflow; and accretion onto a neutron star.

Merger Trees uses a Monte Carlo algorithm to generate merger trees describing the formation history of dark matter haloes; the algorithm is implemented in Fortran. The algorithm is a modification of the algorithm of Cole et al. used in the GALFORM semi-analytic galaxy formation model (ascl:1510.005) based on the Extended Press–Schechter theory. It should be applicable to hierarchical models with a wide range of power spectra and cosmological models. It is tuned to be in accurate agreement with the conditional mass functions found in the analysis of merger trees extracted from the Λ cold dark matter Millennium N-body simulation. The code should be a useful tool for semi-analytic models of galaxy formation and for modelling hierarchical structure formation in general.

Mercury is a new general-purpose software package for carrying out orbital integrations for problems in solar-system dynamics. Suitable applications include studying the long-term stability of the planetary system, investigating the orbital evolution of comets, asteroids or meteoroids, and simulating planetary accretion. Mercury is designed to be versatile and easy to use, accepting initial conditions in either Cartesian coordinates or Keplerian elements in "cometary" or "asteroidal" format, with different epochs of osculation for different objects. Output from an integration consists of osculating elements, written in a machine-independent compressed format, which allows the results of a calculation performed on one platform to be transferred (e.g. via FTP) and decoded on another.

During an integration, Mercury monitors and records details of close encounters, sungrazing events, ejections and collisions between objects. The effects of non-gravitational forces on comets can also be modeled. The package supports integrations using a mixed-variable symplectic routine, the Bulirsch-Stoer method, and a hybrid code for planetary accretion calculations.

Mercury-T calculates the evolution of semi-major axis, eccentricity, inclination, rotation period and obliquity of the planets as well as the rotation period evolution of the host body; it is based on the N-body code Mercury (Chambers 1999, ascl:1201.008). It is flexible, allowing computation of the tidal evolution of systems orbiting any non-evolving object (if its mass, radius, dissipation factor and rotation period are known), but also evolving brown dwarfs (BDs) of mass between 0.01 and 0.08 M⊙, an evolving M-dwarf of 0.1 M⊙, an evolving Sun-like star, and an evolving Jupiter.

MERA works with large 3D AMR/uniform-grid and N-body particle data sets from astrophysical simulations such as those produced by the hydrodynamic code RAMSES (ascl:1011.007) and is written entirely in the Julia language. The package provides essential functions for efficient and memory lightweight data loading and analysis. The core of MERA is a database framework.

MeqTrees is a software package for implementing Measurement Equations. This makes it uniquely suited for simulation and calibration of radioastronomical data, especially that involving new radiotelescopes and observational regimes. MeqTrees is implemented as a Python-based front-end called the meqbrowser, and an efficient (C++-based) computational back-end called the meqserver. Numerical models are defined on the front-end via a Python-based Tree Definition Language (TDL), then rapidly executed on the back-end. The use of TDL facilitates an extremely short turn-around time for experimentation with new ideas. This is also helped by unprecedented visualization capabilities for all final and intermediate results. A flexible data model and a number of important optimizations in the back-end ensures that the numerical performance is comparable to that of hand-written code.

MeqTrees includes a highly capable FITS viewer and sky model manager called Tigger, which can also work as a standalone tool.

MEPSA (Multiple Excess Peak Search Algorithm) identifies peaks within a uniformly sampled time series affected by uncorrelated Gaussian noise. MEPSA scans the time series at different timescales by comparing a given peak candidate with a variable number of adjacent bins. While this has originally been conceived for the analysis of gamma-ray burst light (GRB) curves, its usage can be readily extended to other astrophysical transient phenomena whose activity is recorded through different surveys. MEPSA's high flexibility permits the mask of excess patterns it uses to be tailored and optimized without modifying the code.

Menura simulates the interaction between a fully turbulent solar wind and various bodies of the solar system using a novel two-step approach. It is an advanced numerical tool for self-consistent modeling that bridges planetary science and plasma physics. Menura is built around a hybrid Particle-In-Cell solver, treating electrons as a charge-neutralising fluid, and ions as massive particles. It solves iteratively the particles’ dynamics, gathers particle moments at the nodes of a grid, at which the magnetic field is also computed, and then solves the Maxwell equations. This solver uses the popular Current Advance Method (CAM).

megaman is a scalable manifold learning package implemented in python. It has a front-end API designed to be familiar to scikit-learn but harnesses the C++ Fast Library for Approximate Nearest Neighbors (FLANN) and the Sparse Symmetric Positive Definite (SSPD) solver Locally Optimal Block Precodition Gradient (LOBPCG) method to scale manifold learning algorithms to large data sets. It is designed for researchers and as such caches intermediary steps and indices to allow for fast re-computation with new parameters.

MegaLUT is a simple and fast method to correct ellipticity measurements of galaxies from the distortion by the instrumental and atmospheric point spread function (PSF), in view of weak lensing shear measurements. The method performs a classification of galaxies and associated PSFs according to measured shape parameters, and builds a lookup table of ellipticity corrections by supervised learning. This new method has been applied to the GREAT10 image analysis challenge, and demonstrates a refined solution that obtains the highly competitive quality factor of Q = 142, without any power spectrum denoising or training. Of particular interest is the efficiency of the method, with a processing time below 3 ms per galaxy on an ordinary CPU.

The Medium Energy Gamma-ray Astronomy library (MEGAlib) simulates, calibrates, and analyzes data of hard X-ray and gamma-ray detectors, with a specialization on Compton telescopes. The library comprises all necessary data analysis steps for these telescopes, from simulation/measurements via calibration, event reconstruction to image reconstruction.

MEGAlib contains a geometry and detector description tool for the detailed modeling of different detector types and characteristics, and provides an easy to use simulation program based on Geant4 (ascl:1010.079). For different Compton telescope detector types (electron tracking, multiple Compton or time of flight based), specialized Compton event reconstruction algorithms are implemented in different approaches (Chi-square and Bayesian). The high level data analysis tools calculate response matrices, perform image deconvolution (specialized in list-mode-likelihood-based Compton image reconstruction), determine detector resolutions and sensitivities, retrieve spectra, and determine polarization modulations.

MeerCRAB (MeerLICHT Classification of Real and Bogus Transients using Deep Learning) filters out false detections of transients from true astrophysical sources in the transient detection pipeline of the MeerLICHT telescope. It uses a deep learning model based on Convolutional Neural Network.

We describe an automated method for assigning the most probable physical parameters to the components of an eclipsing binary, using only its photometric light curve and combined colors. With traditional methods, one attempts to optimize a multi-parameter model over many iterations, so as to minimize the chi-squared value. We suggest an alternative method, where one selects pairs of coeval stars from a set of theoretical stellar models, and compares their simulated light curves and combined colors with the observations. This approach greatly reduces the parameter space over which one needs to search, and allows one to estimate the components' masses, radii and absolute magnitudes, without spectroscopic data. We have implemented this method in an automated program using published theoretical isochrones and limb-darkening coefficients. Since it is easy to automate, this method lends itself to systematic analyses of datasets consisting of photometric time series of large numbers of stars, such as those produced by OGLE, MACHO, TrES, HAT, and many others surveys.

The Mechanic package is a numerical framework for dynamical astronomy, designed to help in massive numerical simulations by efficient task management and unified data storage. The code is built on top of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) and Hierarchical Data Format (HDF5) standards and uses the Task Farm approach to manage numerical tasks. It relies on the core-module approach. The numerical problem implemented in the user-supplied module is separated from the host code (core). The core is designed to handle basic setup, data storage and communication between nodes in a computing pool. It has been tested on large CPU-clusters, as well as desktop computers. The Mechanic may be used in computing dynamical maps, data optimization or numerical integration.

Site with collection of codes and fundamental references on mean motion resonances.

ME(SSY)**2 stands for “Monte-carlo Experiments with Spherically SYmmetric Stellar SYstems." This code simulates the long term evolution of spherical clusters of stars; it was devised specifically to treat dense galactic nuclei. It is based on the pioneering Monte Carlo scheme proposed by Hénon in the 70's and includes all relevant physical ingredients (2-body relaxation, stellar mass spectrum, collisions, tidal disruption, ldots). It is basically a Monte Carlo resolution of the Fokker-Planck equation. It can cope with any stellar mass spectrum or velocity distribution. Being a particle-based method, it also allows one to take stellar collisions into account in a very realistic way. This unique code, featuring most important physical processes, allows million particle simulations, spanning a Hubble time, in a few CPU days on standard personal computers and provides a wealth of data only rivalized by N-body simulations. The current version of the software requires the use of routines from the "Numerical Recipes in Fortran 77" (http://www.nrbook.com/a/bookfpdf.php).

Spearman’s rank correlation test is commonly used in astronomy to discern whether a set of two variables are correlated or not. Unlike most other quantities quoted in astronomical literature, the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient is generally quoted with no attempt to estimate the errors on its value. This code implements a number of Monte Carlo based methods to estimate the uncertainty on the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient.

MCSED models the optical, near-infrared and infrared spectral energy distribution (SED) of galactic systems. Its modularity and options make it flexible and able to address the varying physical properties of galaxies over cosmic time and environment and adjust to changes in understanding of stellar evolution, the details of mass loss, and the products of binary evolution through substitution or addition of new datasets or algorithms. MCSED is built to fit a galaxy’s full SED, from the far-UV to the far-IR. Among other physical processes, it can model continuum emission from stars, continuum and line-emission from ionized gas, attenuation from dust, and mid- and far-IR emission from dust and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). MCSED performs its calculations by creating a complex stellar population (CSP) out of a linear combination of simple-stellar populations (SSPs) using an efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm. It is very quick, and takes advantage of parallel processing.

McScatter illustrates a method of combining stellar dynamics with stellar evolution. The method is intended for elaborate applications, especially the dynamical evolution of rich star clusters. The dynamics is based on binary scattering in a multi-mass field of stars with uniform density and velocity dispersion, using the scattering cross section of Giersz (MNRAS, 2001, 324, 218-30).

MCRGNet (Morphological Classification of Radio Galaxy Network) classifies radio galaxies of different morphologies. It is based on the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), which is trained and applied under a three-step framework: 1.) pretraining the network unsupervisedly with unlabeled samples, 2.) fine-tuning the pretrained network parameters supervisedly with labeled samples, and 3.) classifying a new radio galaxy by the trained network. The code uses a dichotomous tree classifier composed of cascaded CNN based subclassifiers.

MCRaT (Monte Carlo Radiation Transfer) analyzes the radiation signature expected from astrophysical outflows. MCRaT injects photons in a FLASH (ascl:1010.082) simulation and individually propagates and compton scatters the photons through the fluid until the end of the simulation. This process of injection and propagating occurs for a user specified number of times until there are no more photons to be injected. Users can then construct light curves and spectra with the MCRaT calculated results. The hydrodynamic simulations used with this version of MCRaT must be in 2D; however, the photon propagation and scattering is done in 3D by assuming cylindrical symmetry. Additionally, MCRaT uses the full Klein–Nishina cross section including the effects of polarization, which can be fully simulated in the code. MCRaT works with FLASH hydrodynamic simulations and PLUTO (ascl:1010.045) AMR simulations, with both 2D spherical (r, equation) and 2D cartesian ((x,y) and (r,z)).

MCPM extracts K2 photometry in dense stellar regions; the code is a modification and extension of the K2-CPM package (ascl:2107.024), which was developed for less-crowded fields. MCPM uses the pixel response function together with accurate astrometric grids, combining signals from a few pixels, and simultaneously fits for an astrophysical model to produce extracted more precise K2 photometry.

The McGill Planar Hydrogen Atmosphere Code (McPHAC) v1.1 calculates the hydrostatic equilibrium structure and emergent spectrum of an unmagnetized hydrogen atmosphere in the plane-parallel approximation at surface gravities appropriate for neutron stars. McPHAC incorporates several improvements over previous codes for which tabulated model spectra are available: (1) Thomson scattering is treated anisotropically, which is shown to result in a 0.2%-3% correction in the emergent spectral flux across the 0.1-5 keV passband; (2) the McPHAC source code is made available to the community, allowing it to be scrutinized and modified by other researchers wishing to study or extend its capabilities; and (3) the numerical uncertainty resulting from the discrete and iterative solution is studied as a function of photon energy, indicating that McPHAC is capable of producing spectra with numerical uncertainties <0.01%. The accuracy of the spectra may at present be limited to ~1%, but McPHAC enables researchers to study the impact of uncertain inputs and additional physical effects, thereby supporting future efforts to reduce those inaccuracies. Comparison of McPHAC results with spectra from one of the previous model atmosphere codes (NSA) shows agreement to lsim1% near the peaks of the emergent spectra. However, in the Wien tail a significant deficit of flux in the spectra of the previous model is revealed, determined to be due to the previous work not considering large enough optical depths at the highest photon frequencies. The deficit is most significant for spectra with T eff < 105.6 K, though even there it may not be of much practical importance for most observations.

MCMCI (Markov chain Monte Carlo + isochrones) characterizes a whole exoplanetary system directly by modeling the star and its planets simultaneously. The code, written in Fortran, uses light curves and basic stellar parameters with a transit analysis algorithm that interacts with stellar evolutionary models, thus using both model-dependent and empirical age indicators to characterize the system.

MCMCDiagnostics contains two diagnostics, written in Julia, for Markov Chain Monte Carlo. The first is potential_scale_reduction(chains...), which estimates the potential scale reduction factor, also known as Rhat, for multiple scalar chains
. The second, effective_sample_size(chain), calculates the effective sample size for scalar chains. These diagnostics are intended as building blocks for use by other libraries.

Monte Carlo Merger Analysis Code (MCMAC) aids in the study of merging clusters. It takes observed priors on each subcluster's mass, radial velocity, and projected separation, draws randomly from those priors, and uses them in a analytic model to get posterior PDF's for merger dynamic properties of interest (e.g. collision velocity, time since collision).

The tool McLuster is an open source code that can be used to either set up initial conditions for N-body computations or, alternatively, to generate artificial star clusters for direct investigation. There are two different versions of the code, one basic version for generating all kinds of unevolved clusters (in the following called mcluster) and one for setting up evolved stellar populations at a given age. The former is completely contained in the C file main.c. The latter (dubbed mcluster_sse) is more complex and requires additional FORTRAN routines, namely the Single-Star Evolution (SSE) routines by Hurley, Pols & Tout (ascl:1303.015) that are provided with the McLuster code.

MCFOST is a 3D continuum and line radiative transfer code based on an hybrid Monte Carlo and ray-tracing method. It is mainly designed to study the circumstellar environment of young stellar objects, but has been used for a wide range of astrophysical problems. The calculations are done exactly within the limitations of the Monte Carlo noise and machine precision, i.e., no approximation are used in the calculations. The code has been strongly optimized for speed.

MCFOST is primarily designed to study protoplanetary disks. The code can reproduce most of the observations of disks, including SEDs, scattered light images, IR and mm visibilities, and atomic and molecular line maps. As the Monte Carlo method is generic, any complex structure can be handled by MCFOST and its use can be extended to other astrophysical objects. For instance, calculations have succesfully been performed on infalling envelopes and AGB stars. MCFOST also includes a non-LTE line transfer module, and NLTE level population are obtained via iterations between Monte Carlo radiative transfer calculations and statistical equilibrium.

mcfit computes integral transforms, inverse transforms without analytic inversion, and integral kernels as derivatives. It can also transform input array along any axis, output the matrix form, an is easily extensible for other kernels.

MCCD (Multi-CCD) generates a Point Spread Function (PSF) model based on stars observations in the field of view. After defining the MCCD model parameters and running and validating the training, the model can recover the PSF at any position in the field of view. Written in Python, MCCD also calculates various statistics and can plot a random test star and its model reconstruction.

MCALF (Multi-Component Atmospheric Line Fitting) accurately constrains velocity information from spectral imaging observations using machine learning techniques. It is useful for solar physicists trying to extract line-of-sight (LOS) Doppler velocity information from spectral imaging observations (Stokes I measurements) of the Sun. A toolkit is provided that can be used to define a spectral model optimized for a particular dataset. MCALF is particularly suited for extracting velocity information from spectral imaging observations where the individual spectra can contain multiple spectral components. Such multiple components are typically present when active solar phenomenon occur within an isolated region of the solar disk. Spectra within such a region will often have a large emission component superimposed on top of the underlying absorption spectral profile from the quiescent solar atmosphere.

MCAL calculates high precision metallicities and effective temperatures for M dwarfs; the method behaves properly down to R = 40 000 and S/N = 25, and results were validated against a sample of stars in common with SOPHIE high resolution spectra.

MC3D is a 3D continuum radiative transfer code; it is based on the Monte-Carlo method and solves the radiative transfer problem self-consistently. It is designed for the simulation of dust temperatures in arbitrary geometric configurations and the resulting observables: spectral energy distributions, wavelength-dependent images, and polarization maps. The main objective is the investigation of "dust-dominated" astrophysical systems such as young stellar objects surrounded by an optically thick circumstellar disk and an optically thin(ner) envelope, debris disks around more evolved stars, asymptotic giant branch stars, the dust component of the interstellar medium, and active galactic nuclei.

MC³ (Multi-core Markov-chain Monte Carlo) is a Bayesian statistics tool that can be executed from the shell prompt or interactively through the Python interpreter with single- or multiple-CPU parallel computing. It offers Markov-chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) posterior-distribution sampling for several algorithms, Levenberg-Marquardt least-squares optimization, and uniform non-informative, Jeffreys non-informative, or Gaussian-informative priors. MC³ can share the same value among multiple parameters and fix the value of parameters to constant values, and offers Gelman-Rubin convergence testing and correlated-noise estimation with time-averaging or wavelet-based likelihood estimation methods.

MC-SPAM (Monte-Carlo Synthetic-Photometry/Atmosphere-Model) generates limb-darkening coefficients from models that are comparable to transit photometry; it extends the original SPAM algorithm by Howarth (2011) by taking in consideration the uncertainty on the stellar and transit parameters of the system under analysis.

MBProj2 obtains thermodynamic profiles of galaxy clusters. It forward-models cluster X-ray surface brightness profiles in multiple bands, optionally assuming hydrostatic equilibrium. The code is a set of Python classes the user can use or extend. When modelling a cluster assuming hydrostatic equilibrium, the user chooses a form for the density profile (e.g. binning or a beta model), the metallicity profile, and the dark matter profile (e.g. NFW). If hydrostatic equilibrium is not assumed, a temperature profile model is used instead of the dark matter profile. The code uses the emcee Markov Chain Monte Carlo code (ascl:1303.002) to sample the model parameters, using these to produce chains of thermodynamic profiles.

MOLSCAT, which supercedes MOLSCAT version 14 (ascl:1206.004), performs non-reactive quantum scattering calculations for atomic and molecular collisions using coupled-channel methods. Simple atom-molecule and molecule-molecule collision types are coded internally and additional ones may be handled with plug-in routines. Plug-in routines may include external magnetic, electric or photon fields (and combinations of them).

The package also includes BOUND, which performs calculations of bound-state energies in weakly bound atomic and molecular systems using coupled-channel methods, and FIELD, a development of BOUND that locates values of external fields at which a bound state exists with a specified energy. Though the three programs have different applications, they use closely related methods, share many subroutines, and are released with a single code base.

Mbb_emcee fits modified blackbodies to photometry data using an affine invariant MCMC. It has large number of options which, for example, allow computation of the IR luminosity or dustmass as part of the fit. Carrying out a fit produces a HDF5 output file containing the results, which can either be read directly, or read back into a mbb_results object for analysis. Upper and lower limits can be imposed as well as Gaussian priors on the model parameters. These additions are useful for analyzing poorly constrained data. In addition to standard Python packages scipy, numpy, and cython, mbb_emcee requires emcee (ascl:1303.002), Astropy (ascl:1304.002), h5py, and for unit tests, nose.

MBASC (Multi-Band AGN-SFG Classifier) classifies sources as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) and Star Forming Galaxies (SFGs). The algorithm is based on the light gradient-boosting machine ML technique. MBASC can use a wide range of multi-wavelength data and redshifts to predict a classification for sources.

MAYONNAISE (Morphological Analysis Yielding separated Objects iN Near infrAred usIng Sources Estimation), or MAYO for short, is a pipeline for exoplanet and disk high-contrast imaging from ADI datasets. The pipeline is mostly automated; the package also loads the data and injects synthetic data if needed. MAYONNAISE parameters are written in a json file called parameters_algo.json and placed in a working_directory.

Mayavi provides general-purpose 3D scientific visualizations. It offers easy interactive tools for data visualization that fit with the scientific user's workflow. Mayavi provides several entry points: a full-blown interactive application; a Python library with both a MATLAB-like interface focused on easy scripting and a feature-rich object hierarchy; widgets associated with these objects for assembling in a domain-specific application, and plugins that work with a general purpose application-building framework.

maxsmooth fits derivative constrained functions (DCF) such as Maximally Smooth Functions (MSFs) to data sets. MSFs are functions for which there are no zero crossings in derivatives of order m >= 2 within the domain of interest. They are designed to prevent the loss of signals when fitting out dominant smooth foregrounds or large magnitude signals that mask signals of interest. Here "smooth" means that the foregrounds follow power law structures and do not feature turning points in the band of interest. maxsmooth uses quadratic programming implemented with CVXOPT (ascl:2008.017) to fit data subject to a fixed linear constraint, Ga <= 0, where the product Ga is a matrix of derivatives. The code tests the <= 0 constraint multiplied by a positive or negative sign and can test every available sign combination but by default, it implements a sign navigating algorithm.

matvis simulates radio interferometric visibilities at the necessary scale with both CPU and GPU implementations. It is matrix-based and applicable to wide field-of-view instruments such as the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), as it does not make any approximations of the visibility integral (such as the flat-sky approximation). The only approximation made is that the sky is a collection of point sources, which is valid for sky models that intrinsically consist of point-sources, but is an approximation for diffuse sky models. The matvix matrix-based algorithm is fast and scales well to large numbers of antennas. The code supports both CPU and GPU implementations as drop-in replacements for each other and also supports both dense and sparse sky models.

The injection-recovery MATRIX (Multi-phAse Transits Recovery from Injected eXoplanets) Toolkit creates grids of scenarios with a set of periods, radii, and epochs of synthetic transiting exoplanet signals in a provided light curve. Typical injection-recovery executions consist of 2-dimensional scenarios, where only one epoch (random or hardcoded) was used for each period and radius, which may reduce accuracy. MATRIX performs multi-phase analyses needing only a few parameters in a configuration file and running one line of code.

A discrete Point Spread Function (PSF) is a sampled version of a continuous two-dimensional PSF. The shape information about the photon scattering pattern of a discrete PSF is typically encoded using a numerical table (matrix) or a FITS image file. MATPHOT shifts discrete PSFs within an observational model using a 21-pixel- wide damped sinc function and position partial derivatives are computed using a five-point numerical differentiation formula. MATPHOT achieves accurate and precise stellar photometry and astrometry of undersampled CCD observations by using supersampled discrete PSFs that are sampled two, three, or more times more finely than the observational data.

MATCH matches up items in two different lists, which can have two different systems of coordinates. The program allows the two sets of coordinates to be related by a linear, quadratic, or cubic transformation. MATCH was designed and written to work on lists of stars and other astronomical objects but can be applied to other types of data. In order to match two lists of N points, the main algorithm calls for O(N^6) operations; though not the most efficient choice, it does allow for arbitrary translation, rotation, and scaling.

maszcal calibrates the observable-mass relation for galaxy clusters, with a focus on the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich signal's relation to mass. maszcal explicitly models baryonic matter density profiles, differing from most previous approaches that treat galaxy clusters as purely dark matter. To do this, it uses a generalized Nararro-Frenk-White (GNFW) density to represent the baryons, while using the more typical NFW profile to represent dark matter.

massmappy recovers convergence mass maps on the celestial sphere from weak lensing cosmic shear observations. It relies on SSHT (ascl:2207.034) and HEALPix (ascl:1107.018) to handle sampled data on the sphere. The spherical Kaiser-Squires estimator is implemented.

massconvert, written in Fortran, provides driver and fitting routines for converting halo mass definitions from one spherical overdensity to another assuming an NFW density profile. In surveys that probe ever lower cluster masses and temperatures, sample variance is generally comparable to or greater than shot noise and thus cannot be neglected in deriving precision cosmological constraints; massconvert offers an accurate fitting formula for the conversion between different definitions of halo mass.

MASSCLEAN is a sophisticated and robust stellar cluster image and photometry simulation package. This package is able to create color-magnitude diagrams and standard FITS images in any of the traditional optical and near-infrared bands based on cluster characteristics input by the user, including but not limited to distance, age, mass, radius and extinction. At the limit of very distant, unresolved clusters, we have checked the integrated colors created in MASSCLEAN against those from other simple stellar population (SSP) models with consistent results. Because the algorithm populates the cluster with a discrete number of tenable stars, it can be used as part of a Monte Carlo Method to derive the probabilistic range of characteristics (integrated colors, for example) consistent with a given cluster mass and age.

MasQU extracts polarization information in the CMB by reducing contamination from so-called "ambiguous modes" on a masked sky, which contain leakage from the larger E-mode signal and utilizing derivative operators on the real-space Stokes Q and U parameters. In particular, the package can perform finite differences on masked, irregular grids and is applied to a semi-regular spherical pixellization, the HEALPix grid. The formalism reduces to the known finite-difference solutions in the case of a regular grid. On a masked sphere, the software represents a considerable reduction in B-mode noise from limited sky coverage.

maskfill inward extrapolates edge pixels just outside masked regions, using iterative median filtering and the full information contained in the edge pixels. This provides seamless transitions between masked pixels and good pixels, and allows high fidelity reconstruction of gaps in continuous narrow features. An image and a mask the only required inputs.

Mask galaxy is an automatic machine learning pipeline for detection, segmentation and morphological classification of galaxies. The model is based on the Mask R-CNN Deep Learning architecture. This model of instance segmentation also performs image segmentation at the pixel level, and has shown a Mean Average Precision (mAP) of 0.93 in morphological classification of spiral or elliptical galaxies.

MARZ analyzes objects and produces high quality spectroscopic redshift measurements. Spectra not matched correctly by the automatic algorithm can be redshifted manually by cycling automatic results, manual template comparison, or marking spectral features. The software has an intuitive interface and powerful automatic matching capabilities on spectra, and can be run interactively or from the command line, and runs as a Web application. MARZ can be run on a local server; it is also available for use on a public server.

MARXS (Multi-Architecture-Raytrace-Xraymission-Simulator) simulates X-ray observatories. Primarily designed to simulate X-ray instruments on astronomical X-ray satellites and sounding rocket payloads, it can also be used to ray-trace experiments in the laboratory. MARXS performs polarization Monte-Carlo ray-trace simulations from a source (astronomical or lab) through a collection of optical elements such as mirrors, baffles, and gratings to a detector.

MARX (Model of AXAF Response to X-rays) is a suite of programs designed to enable the user to simulate the on-orbit performance of the Chandra satellite. MARX provides a detailed ray-trace simulation of how Chandra responds to a variety of astrophysical sources and can generate standard FITS events files and images as output. It contains models for the HRMA mirror system onboard Chandra as well as the HETG and LETG gratings and all focal plane detectors.

Marvin searches, accesses, and visualizes data from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey. Written in Python, it provides tools for easy efficient interaction with the MaNGA data via local files, files retrieved from the Science Archive Server, or data directly grabbed from the database. The tools come mainly in the form of convenience functions and classes for interacting with the data. Also available is a web app, Marvin-web, offers an easily accessible interface for searching the MaNGA data and visual exploration of individual MaNGA galaxies or of the entire sample, and a powerful query functionality that uses the API to query the MaNGA databases and return the search results to your python session. Marvin-API is the critical link that allows Marvin-tools and Marvin-web to interact with the databases, which enables users to harness the statistical power of the MaNGA data set.

MARTINI (Mock APERTIF-like Radio Telescope Interferometry of the Neutal ISM) creates synthetic resolved HI line observations (data cubes) of smoothed-particle hydrodynamics simulations of galaxies. The various aspects of the mock-observing process are divided logically into sub-modules handling the data cube, source, beam, noise, spectral model and SPH kernel. MARTINI is object-oriented: each sub-module provides a class (or classes) which can be configured as desired. For most sub-modules, base classes are provided to allow for straightforward customization. Instances of each sub-module class are then given as parameters to the Martini class. A mock observation is then constructed by calling a handful of functions to execute the desired steps in the mock-observing process.

MarsLux generates illumination maps of Mars from Digital Terrain Model (DTM), permitting users to investigate in detail the illumination conditions on Mars based on its topography and the relative position of the Sun. MarsLux consists of two Python codes, SolaPar and MarsLux. SolaPar calculates the matrix with solar parameters for one date or a range between the two. The Marslux code generates the illumination maps using the same DTM and the files generated by SolaPar. The resulting illumination maps show areas that are fully illuminated, areas in total shadow, and areas with partial shade, and can be used for geomorphological studies to examine gullies, thermal weathering, or mass wasting processes as well as for producing energy budget maps for future exploration missions.

With the commissioning of the second MAGIC gamma-ray Cherenkov telescope situated close to MAGIC-I, the standard analysis package of the MAGIC collaboration, MARS, has been upgraded in order to perform the stereoscopic reconstruction of the detected atmospheric showers. MARS is a ROOT-based code written in C++, which includes all the necessary algorithms to transform the raw data recorded by the telescopes into information about the physics parameters of the observed targets. An overview of the methods for extracting the basic shower parameters is presented, together with a description of the tools used in the background discrimination and in the estimation of the gamma-ray source spectra.

MARGE (Machine learning Algorithm for Radiative transfer of Generated Exoplanets) generates exoplanet spectra across a defined parameter space, processes the output, and trains, validates, and tests machine learning models as a fast approximation to radiative transfer. It uses BART (ascl:1608.004) for spectra generation and modifies BART’s Bayesian sampler (MC³, ascl:1610.013) with a random uniform sampler to propose models within a defined parameter space. More generally, MARGE provides a framework for training neural network models to approximate a forward, deterministic process.

Margarine computes marginal bayesian statistics given a set of samples from an MCMC or nested sampling run. Specifically, the code calculates marginal Kullback-Leibler divergences and Bayesian dimensionalities using Masked Autoregressive Flows and Kernel Density Estimators to learn and sample posterior distributions of signal subspaces in high dimensional data models, and determines the properties of cosmological subspaces, such as their log-probability densities and how well constrained they are, independent of nuisance parameters. Margarine thus allows for direct and specific comparison of the constraining ability of different experimental approaches, which can in turn lead to improvements in experimental design.

MAPS (Multi-frequency Angular Power Spectrum) extracts two-point statistical information from Epoch of Reionization (EoR) signals observed in three dimensions, with two directions on the sky and the wavelength (or frequency) constituting the third dimension. Rather than assume that the signal has the same statistical properties in all three directions, as the spherically averaged power spectrum (SAPS) does, MAPS does not make these assumptions, making it more natural for radio interferometric observations than SAPS.

MAPPINGS V is a update of the MAPPINGS code (ascl:1306.008) and provides new cooling function computations for optically thin plasmas based on the greatly expanded atomic data of the CHIANTI 8 database. The number of cooling and recombination lines has been expanded from ~2000 to over 80,000, and temperature-dependent spline-based collisional data have been adopted for the majority of transitions. The expanded atomic data set provides improved modeling of both thermally ionized and photoionized plasmas; the code is now capable of predicting detailed X-ray spectra of nonequilibrium plasmas over the full nonrelativistic temperature range, increasing its utility in cosmological simulations, in modeling cooling flows, and in generating accurate models for the X-ray emission from shocks in supernova remnants.

MAPPINGS III is a general purpose astrophysical plasma modelling code. It is principally intended to predict emission line spectra of medium and low density plasmas subjected to different levels of photoionization and ionization by shockwaves. MAPPINGS III tracks up to 16 atomic species in all stages of ionization, over a useful range of 102 to 108 K. It treats spherical and plane parallel geometries in equilibrium and time-dependent models. MAPPINGS III is useful for computing models of HI and HII regions, planetary nebulae, novae, supernova remnants, Herbig-Haro shocks, active galaxies, the intergalactic medium and the interstellar medium in general. The present version of MAPPINGS III is a large FORTRAN program that runs with a simple TTY interface for historical and portability reasons. A newer version of this software, MAPPINGS V (ascl:1807.005), is available.

MapCurvature, written in IDL, can create map projections with Goldberg-Gott indicatrices. These indicatrices measure the flexion and skewness of a map, and are useful for determining whether features are faithfully reproduced on a particular projection.

The MapCUMBA package applies a multigrid fast iterative Jacobi algorithm for map-making in the context of CMB experiments.

Mangrove uses Graph Neural Networks to regress baryonic properties directly from full dark matter merger trees to infer galaxy properties. The package includes code for preprocessing the merger tree, and training the model can be done either as single experiments or as a sweep. Mangrove provides loss functions, learning rate schedulers, models, and a script for doing the training on a GPU.

Mangle deals accurately and efficiently with complex angular masks, such as occur typically in galaxy surveys. Mangle performs the following tasks: converts masks between many handy formats (including HEALPix); rapidly finds the polygons containing a given point on the sphere; rapidly decomposes a set of polygons into disjoint parts; expands masks in spherical harmonics; generates random points with weights given by the mask; and implements computations for correlation function analysis. To mangle, a mask is an arbitrary union of arbitrarily weighted angular regions bounded by arbitrary numbers of edges. The restrictions on the mask are only (1) that each edge must be part of some circle on the sphere (but not necessarily a great circle), and (2) that the weight within each subregion of the mask must be constant. Mangle is complementary to and integrated with the HEALPix package (ascl:1107.018); mangle works with vector graphics whereas HEALPix works with pixels.

The MaNGA Data Reduction Pipeline (DRP) processes the raw data to produce flux calibrated, sky subtracted, coadded data cubes from each of the individual exposures for a given galaxy. The DRP consists of two primary parts: the 2d stage that produces flux calibrated fiber spectra from raw individual exposures, and the 3d stage that combines multiple flux calibrated exposures with astrometric information to produce stacked data cubes. These science-grade data cubes are then processed by the MaNGA Data Analysis Pipeline (ascl:2203.017), which measures the shape and location of various spectral features, fits stellar population models, and performs a variety of other analyses necessary to derive astrophysically meaningful quantities from the calibrated data cubes.

The MaNGA data analysis pipeline (MaNGA DAP) analyzes the data produced by the MaNGA data-reduction pipeline (ascl:2203.016) to produced physical properties derived from the MaNGA spectroscopy. All survey-provided properties are currently derived from the log-linear binned datacubes (i.e., the LOGCUBE files).

The Maneage (Managing data lineage; ending pronounced like "lineage") framework produces fully reproducible computational research. It provides full control on building the necessary software environment from a low-level C compiler, the shell and LaTeX, all the way up to the high-level science software in languages such as Python without a third-party package manager. Once the software environment is built, adding analysis steps is as easy as defining "Make" rules to allow parallelized operations, and not repeating operations that do not need to be recreated. Make provides control over data provenance. A Maneage'd project also contains the narrative description of the project in LaTeX, which helps prepare the research for publication. All results from the analysis are passed into the report through LaTeX macros, allowing immediate dynamic updates to the PDF paper when any part of the analysis has changed. All information is stored in plain text and is version-controlled in Git. Maneage itself is actually a Git branch; new projects start by defining a new Git branch over it and customizing it for a new project. Through Git merging of branches, it is possible to import infrastructure updates to projects.

MAMPOSSt (Modeling Anisotropy and Mass Profiles of Observed Spherical Systems) is a Bayesian code to perform mass/orbit modeling of spherical systems. It determines marginal parameter distributions and parameter covariances of parametrized radial distributions of dark or total matter, as well as the mass of a possible central black hole, and the radial profiles of density and velocity anisotropy of one or several tracer components, all of which are jointly fit to the discrete data in projected phase space. It is based upon the MAMPOSSt likelihood function for the distribution of individual tracers in projected phase space (projected radius and line-of-sight velocity) and the CosmoMC Markov Chain Monte Carlo code (ascl:1106.025), run in generic mode. MAMPOSSt is not based on the 6D distribution function (which would require triple integrals), but on the assumption that the local 3D velocity distribution is an (anisotropic) Gaussian (requiring only a single integral).

MALU visualizes integral field spectroscopy (IFS) data such as CALIFA, MANGA, SAMI or MUSE data producing fully interactive plots. The tool is not specific to any instrument. It is available in Python and no installation is required.

MaLTPyNT (Matteo's Libraries and Tools in Python for NuSTAR Timing) provides a quick-look timing analysis of NuSTAR data, properly treating orbital gaps and exploiting the presence of two independent detectors by using the cospectrum as a proxy for the power density spectrum. The output of the analysis is a cospectrum, or a power density spectrum, that can be fitted with XSPEC (ascl:9910.005) or ISIS (ascl:1302.002). The software also calculates time lags. Though written for NuSTAR data, MaLTPyNT can also perform standard spectral analysis on X-ray data from other satellite such as XMM-Newton and RXTE.

MakeCloud makes turbulent giant molecular cloud (GMC) initial conditions for GIZMO (ascl:1410.003). It generates turbulent velocity fields on the fly and stores that data in a user-specified path for efficiency. The code is flexible, allowing the user control through various parameters, including the radius of the cloud, number of gas particles, type of initial turbulent velocity (Gaussian or full), and magnetic energy as a fraction of the binding energy, among other options. With an additional file, it can also create glassy initial conditions.

MAH calculates the posterior distribution of the "minimum atmospheric height" (MAH) of an exoplanet by inputting the joint posterior distribution of the mass and radius. The code collapses the two dimensions of mass and radius into a one dimensional term that most directly speaks to whether the planet has an atmosphere or not. The joint mass-radius posteriors derived from a fit of some exoplanet data (likely using MCMC) can be used by MAH to evaluate the posterior distribution of R_MAH, from which the significance of a non-zero R_MAH (i.e. an atmosphere is present) is calculated.

Magritte performs 3D radiative transfer modeling; though focused on astrophysics and cosmology, the techniques can also be applied more generally. The code uses a deterministic ray-tracer with a formal solver that currently focuses on line radiative transfer. Magritte can either be used as a C++ library or as a Python package.

MAGRATHEA solves planet interiors and considers the case of fully differentiated interiors. The code integrates the hydrostatic equation in order to determine the correct planet radius given the mass in each layer. The code returns the pressure, temperature, density, phase, and radius at steps of enclosed mass. The code support four layers: core, mantle, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. Each layer has a phase diagram with equations of state chosen for each phase.

MAGRATHEA (Multi-processor Adaptive Grid Refinement Analysis for THEoretical Astrophysics) is a foundational cosmological library and a relativistic raytracing code. Classical linear algebra libraries come with their own operations and can be difficult to leverage for new data types. Instead of providing basic types, MAGRATHEA provides tools to generate base types such as scalar quantities, points, vectors, or tensors.

Magrathea-Pathfinder propagates photons within cosmological simulations to construct observables. This high-performance framework uses a 3D Adaptive-Mesh Refinement and is built on top of the MAGRATHEA metalibrary (ascl:2203.023).

MAGPy-RV (Modelling stellar Activity with Gaussian Processes in Radial Velocity) models data with Gaussian Process regression and affine invariant Monte Carlo Markov Chain parameter searching. Developed to model intrinsic, quasi-periodic variations induced by the host star in radial velocity (RV) surveys for the detection of exoplanets and the accurate measurements of their orbital parameters and masses, it now includes a variety of kernels and models and can be applied to any timeseries analysis. MAGPy-RV includes publication level plotting, efficient posterior extraction, and export-ready LaTeX results tables. It also handles multiple datasets at once and can model offsets and systematics from multiple instruments. MAGPy-RV requires no external dependencies besides basic python libraries and corner (ascl:1702.002).

MAGPHYS is a self-contained, user-friendly model package to interpret observed spectral energy distributions of galaxies in terms of galaxy-wide physical parameters pertaining to the stars and the interstellar medium. MAGPHYS is optimized to derive statistical constraints of fundamental parameters related to star formation activity and dust content (e.g. star formation rate, stellar mass, dust attenuation, dust temperatures) of large samples of galaxies using a wide range of multi-wavelength observations. A Bayesian approach is used to interpret the SEDs all the way from the ultraviolet/optical to the far-infrared.

Magnetron, written in Python, decomposes magnetar bursts into a superposition of small spike-like features with a simple functional form, where the number of model components is itself part of the inference problem. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling and reversible jumps between models with different numbers of parameters are used to characterize the posterior distributions of the model parameters and the number of components per burst.

Magnetizer computes time and radial dependent magnetic fields for a sample of galaxies in the output of a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. The magnetic field is obtained by numerically solving the galactic dynamo equations throughout history of each galaxy. Stokes parameters and Faraday rotation measure can also be computed along a random line-of-sight for each galaxy.

Large-scale coherent magnetic fields are observed in galaxies and clusters, but their ultimate origin remains a mystery. We reconsider the prospects for primordial magnetogenesis by a cosmic string network. We show that the magnetic flux produced by long strings has been overestimated in the past, and give improved estimates. We also compute the fields created by the loop population, and find that it gives the dominant contribution to the total magnetic field strength on present-day galactic scales. We present numerical results obtained by evolving semi-analytic models of string networks (including both one-scale and velocity-dependent one-scale models) in a Lambda-CDM cosmology, including the forces and torques on loops from Hubble redshifting, dynamical friction, and gravitational wave emission. Our predictions include the magnetic field strength as a function of correlation length, as well as the volume covered by magnetic fields. We conclude that string networks could account for magnetic fields on galactic scales, but only if coupled with an efficient dynamo amplification mechanism.

MAGNETAR is a set of tools for the study of the magnetic field in simulations of MHD turbulence and polarization observations. It calculates the histogram of relative orientation between density structure in the magnetic field in data cubes from simulations of MHD turbulence and observations of polarization using the method of histogram of relative orientations (HRO).

MAGIX provides an interface between existing codes and an iterating engine that minimizes deviations of the model results from available observational data; it constrains the values of the model parameters and provides corresponding error estimates. Many models (and, in principle, not only astrophysical models) can be plugged into MAGIX to explore their parameter space and find the set of parameter values that best fits observational/experimental data. MAGIX complies with the data structures and reduction tools of Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), but can be used with other astronomical and with non-astronomical data.

The R suite magicaxis makes useful and pretty plots for scientific plotting and includes functions for base plotting, with particular emphasis on pretty axis labelling in a number of circumstances that are often used in scientific plotting. It also includes functions for generating images and contours that reflect the 2D quantile levels of the data designed particularly for output of MCMC posteriors where visualizing the location of the 68% and 95% 2D quantiles for covariant parameters is a necessary part of the post MCMC analysis, can generate low and high error bars, and allows clipping of values, rejection of bad values, and log stretching.