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[ascl:1210.015] Tempo2: Pulsar Timing Package

Tempo2 is a pulsar timing package developed to be used both for general pulsar timing applications and also for pulsar timing array research in which data-sets from multiple pulsars need to be processed simultaneously. It was initially developed by George Hobbs and Russell Edwards as part of the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array project. Tempo2 is based on the original Tempo (ascl:1509.002) code and can be used (from the command-line) in a similar fashion. It is very versatile and can be extended by plugins.

[ascl:1210.016] Specview: 1-D spectral visualization and analysis of astronomical spectrograms

Specview is a tool for 1-D spectral visualization and analysis of astronomical spectrograms. Written in Java, it is capable of reading all the Hubble Space Telescope spectral data formats as well as data from several other instruments (such as IUE, FUSE, ISO, FORS and SDSS), preview spectra from MAST, and data from generic FITS and ASCII tables. It can read data from Virtual Observatory servers, and read and write spectrogram data in Virtual Observatory SED format. It can also read files in the SPC Galactic format used in the chemistry field. Once ingested, data can be plotted and examined with a large selection of custom settings. Specview supports instrument-specific data quality handling, flexible spectral units conversions, custom plotting attributes, plot annotations, tiled plots, hardcopy to JPEG files and PostScript file or printer, etc. Specview can be used to build wide-band SEDs, overplotting or combining data from the same astronomical source taken with different instruments and/or spectral bands. Data can be further processed with averaging, splicing, detrending, and Fourier filtering tools. Specview has a spectral model fitting capability that enables the user to work with multi-component models (including user-defined models) and fit models to data.

[ascl:1210.017] McPHAC: McGill Planar Hydrogen Atmosphere Code

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.

[ascl:1210.018] Systemic Console: Advanced analysis of exoplanetary data

Systemic Console is a tool for advanced analysis of exoplanetary data. It comprises a graphical tool for fitting radial velocity and transits datasets and a library of routines for non-interactive calculations. Among its features are interactive plotting of RV curves and transits, combined fitting of RV and transit timing (primary and secondary), interactive periodograms and FAP estimation, and bootstrap and MCMC error estimation. The console package includes public radial velocity and transit data.

[ascl:1210.019] QFitsView: FITS file viewer

QFitsView is a FITS file viewer that can display one, two, and three-dimensional FITS files. It has three modes of operation, depending of what kind of data is being displayed. One-dimensional data are shown in an x-y plot. Two-dimensional images are shown in the main window. Three-dimensional data cubes can be displayed in a variety of ways, with the third dimension shown as a x-y plot at the bottom of the image display. QFitsView was written in C++ and uses the Qt widget library, which makes it available for all major platforms: Windows, MAC OS X, and many Unix variants.

[ascl:1210.020] GASGANO: Data File Organizer

GASGANO is a GUI software tool for managing and viewing data files produced by VLT Control System (VCS) and the Data Flow System (DFS). It is developed and maintained by ESO to help its user community manage and organize astronomical data observed and produced by all VLT compliant telescopes in a systematic way. The software understands FITS, PAF, and ASCII files, and Reduction Blocks, and can group, sort, classify, filter, and search data in addition to allowing the user to browse, view, and manage them.

[ascl:1210.021] SMART: Spectroscopic Modeling Analysis and Reduction Tool

SMART is an IDL-based software tool, developed by the IRS Instrument Team at Cornell University, that allows users to reduce and analyze Spitzer data from all four modules of the Infrared Spectrograph, including the peak-up arrays. The software is designed to make full use of the ancillary files generated in the Spitzer Science Center pipeline so that it can either remove or flag artifacts and corrupted data and maximize the signal-to-noise ratio in the extraction routines. It can be run in both interactive and batch modes. SMART includes visualization tools for assessing data quality, basic arithmetic operations for either two-dimensional images or one-dimensional spectra, extraction of both point and extended sources, and a suite of spectral analysis tools.

[ascl:1210.022] HAM2D: 2D Shearing Box Model

HAM solves non-relativistic hyperbolic partial differential equations in conservative form using high-resolution shock-capturing techniques. This version of HAM has been configured to solve the magnetohydrodynamic equations of motion in axisymmetry to evolve a shearing box model.

[ascl:1210.023] inf_solv: Kerr inflow solver

The efficiency of thin disk accretion onto black holes depends on the inner boundary condition, specifically the torque applied to the disk at the last stable orbit. This is usually assumed to vanish. This code estimates the torque on a magnetized disk using a steady magnetohydrodynamic inflow model originally developed by Takahashi et al. The efficiency e can depart significantly from the classical thin disk value. In some cases e > 1, i.e., energy is extracted from the black hole.

[ascl:1210.024] ORBADV: ORBital ADVection by interpolation

ORBADV adopts a ZEUS-like scheme to solve magnetohydrodynamic equations of motion in a shearing sheet. The magnetic field is discretized on a staggered mesh, and magnetic field variables represent fluxes through zone faces. The code uses obital advection to ensure fast and accurate integration in a large shearing box.

[ascl:1210.025] TwoDSSM: Self-gravitating 2D shearing sheet

TwoDSSM solves the equations of self-gravitating hydrodynamics in the shearing sheet, with cooling. TwoDSSM is configured to use a simple, exponential cooling model, although it contains code for a more complicated (and perhaps more realistic) cooling model based on a one-zone vertical model. The complicated cooling model can be switched on using a flag.

[ascl:1210.026] PVS-GRMHD: Conservative GRMHD Primitive Variable Solvers

Conservative numerical schemes for general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) require a method for transforming between "conserved'' variables such as momentum and energy density and "primitive" variables such as rest-mass density, internal energy, and components of the four-velocity. The forward transformation (primitive to conserved) has a closed-form solution, but the inverse transformation (conserved to primitive) requires the solution of a set of five nonlinear equations. This code performs the inversion.

[ascl:1210.027] PyCosmic: Detecting cosmics in CALIFA and other fiber-fed integral-field spectroscopy datasets

The detection of cosmic ray hits (cosmics) in fiber-fed integral-field spectroscopy (IFS) data of single exposures is a challenging task because of the complex signal recorded by IFS instruments. Existing detection algorithms are commonly found to be unreliable in the case of IFS data, and the optimal parameter settings are usually unknown a priori for a given dataset. The Calar Alto legacy integral field area (CALIFA) survey generates hundreds of IFS datasets for which a reliable and robust detection algorithm for cosmics is required as an important part of the fully automatic CALIFA data reduction pipeline. PyCosmic combines the edge-detection algorithm of L.A.Cosmic with a point-spread function convolution scheme. PyCosmic is the only algorithm that achieves an acceptable detection performance for CALIFA data. Only for strongly undersampled IFS data does L.A.Cosmic exceed the performance of PyCosmic by a few percent. Thus, PyCosmic appears to be the most versatile cosmics detection algorithm for IFS data.

[ascl:1210.028] QYMSYM: A GPU-accelerated hybrid symplectic integrator

QYMSYM is a GPU accelerated 2nd order hybrid symplectic integrator that identifies close approaches between particles and switches from symplectic to Hermite algorithms for particles that require higher resolution integrations. This is a parallel code running with CUDA on a video card that puts the many processors on board to work while taking advantage of fast shared memory.

[ascl:1210.029] Sapporo: N-body simulation library for GPUs

Sapporo mimics the behavior of GRAPE hardware and uses the GPU to perform high-precision gravitational N-body simulations. It makes use of CUDA and therefore only works on NVIDIA GPUs. N-body codes currently running on GRAPE-6 can switch to Sapporo by a simple relinking of the library. Sapporo's precision is comparable to that of GRAPE-6, even though internally the GPU hardware is limited to single precision arithmetics. This limitation is effectively overcome by emulating double precision for calculating the distance between particles.

[ascl:1210.030] BOOTTRAN: Error Bars for Keplerian Orbital Parameters

BOOTTRAN calculates error bars for Keplerian orbital parameters for both single- and multiple-planet systems. It takes the best-fit parameters and radial velocity data (BJD, velocity, errors) and calculates the error bars from sampling distribution estimated via bootstrapping. It is recommended to be used together with the RVLIN (ascl:1210.031) package, which find best-fit Keplerian orbital parameters. Both RVLIN and BOOTTRAN are compatible with multiple-telescope data. BOOTTRAN also calculates the transit time and secondary eclipse time and their associated error bars. The algorithm is described in the appendix of the associated article.

[ascl:1210.031] RVLIN: Fitting Keplerian curves to radial velocity data

The RVLIN package for IDL is a set of routines that quickly fits an arbitrary number of Keplerian curves to radial velocity data. It can handle data from multiple telescopes (i.e. it solves for the offset), constraints on P, e, and time of peri passage, and can incorporate transit timing data. The code handles fixed periods and circular orbits in combination and transit time constraints, including for multiple transiting planets.

[ascl:1209.001] Bayesian Blocks: Detecting and characterizing local variability in time series

Bayesian Blocks is a time-domain algorithm for detecting localized structures (bursts), revealing pulse shapes within bursts, and generally characterizing intensity variations. The input is raw time series data, in almost any form. Three data modes are elaborated: (1) time-tagged events, (2) binned counts, and (3) measurements at arbitrary times with normal errors. The output is the most probable segmentation of the observation interval into sub-intervals during which the signal is perceptibly constant, i.e. has no statistically significant variations. The idea is not that the source is deemed to actually have this discontinuous, piecewise constant form, rather that such an approximate and generic model is often useful. Treatment of data gaps, variable exposure, extension to piecewise linear and piecewise exponential representations, multi-variate time series data, analysis of variance, data on the circle, other data modes, and dispersed data are included.

This implementation is exact and replaces the greedy, approximate, and outdated algorithm implemented in BLOCK.

[ascl:1209.002] JAGS: Just Another Gibbs Sampler

JAGS analyzes Bayesian hierarchical models using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation not wholly unlike BUGS. JAGS has three aims:

  • to have a cross-platform engine for the BUGS language;
  • to be extensible, allowing users to write their own functions, distributions and samplers; and
  • to be a platform for experimentation with ideas in Bayesian modeling.

[ascl:1209.003] LSD: Large Survey Database framework

The Large Survey Database (LSD) is a Python framework and DBMS for distributed storage, cross-matching and querying of large survey catalogs (>10^9 rows, >1 TB). The primary driver behind its development is the analysis of Pan-STARRS PS1 data. It is specifically optimized for fast queries and parallel sweeps of positionally and temporally indexed datasets. It transparently scales to more than >10^2 nodes, and can be made to function in "shared nothing" architectures.

[ascl:1209.004] CHORIZOS: CHi-square cOde for parameterRized modeling and characterIZation of phOtometry and Spectrophotmetry

CHORIZOS is a multi-purpose Bayesian code developed in IDL to compare photometric data with model spectral energy distributions (SEDs). The user can select the SED family (e.g. Kurucz) and choose the behavior of each parameter (e.g. Teff) to be fixed, constrained to a given range, or unconstrained. The code calculates the likelihood for the full specified parameter ranges, thus allowing for the identification of multiple solutions and the evaluation of the full correlation matrix for the derived parameters of a single solution.

[ascl:1209.005] HARM: A Numerical Scheme for General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics

HARM uses a conservative, shock-capturing scheme for evolving the equations of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics. The fluxes are calculated using the Harten, Lax, & van Leer scheme. A variant of constrained transport, proposed earlier by Tóth, is used to maintain a divergence-free magnetic field. Only the covariant form of the metric in a coordinate basis is required to specify the geometry. On smooth flows HARM converges at second order.

[ascl:1209.006] macula: Rotational modulations in the photometry of spotted stars

Photometric rotational modulations due to starspots remain the most common and accessible way to study stellar activity. Modelling rotational modulations allows one to invert the observations into several basic parameters, such as the rotation period, spot coverage, stellar inclination and differential rotation rate. The most widely used analytic model for this inversion comes from Budding (1977) and Dorren (1987), who considered circular, grey starspots for a linearly limb darkened star. That model is extended to be more suitable in the analysis of high precision photometry such as that by Kepler. Macula, a Fortran 90 code, provides several improvements, such as non-linear limb darkening of the star and spot, a single-domain analytic function, partial derivatives for all input parameters, temporal partial derivatives, diluted light compensation, instrumental offset normalisations, differential rotation, starspot evolution and predictions of transit depth variations due to unocculted spots. The inclusion of non-linear limb darkening means macula has a maximum photometric error an order-of-magnitude less than that of Dorren (1987) for Sun-like stars observed in the Kepler-bandpass. The code executes three orders-of-magnitude faster than comparable numerical codes making it well-suited for inference problems.

[ascl:1209.007] TMCalc: Fast estimation of stellar metallicity [Fe/H]

TMCalc is a C code developed as an extension to ARES. Using the line list given, the code can be used as a precise and fast indicator of the spectroscopic temperature and metallicity for dwarf FKG stars with effective temperatures ranging from 4500 K to 6500 K and with [Fe/H] ranging from -0.8 dex to 0.4 dex.

[ascl:1209.008] Phantom-GRAPE: SIMD accelerated numerical library for N-body simulations

Phantom-GRAPE is a numerical software library to accelerate collisionless $N$-body simulation with SIMD instruction set on x86 architecture. The Newton's forces and also central forces with an arbitrary shape f(r), which have a finite cutoff radius r_cut (i.e. f(r)=0 at r>r_cut), can be quickly computed.

[ascl:1209.009] ANNz: Artificial Neural Networks for estimating photometric redshifts

ANNz is a freely available software package for photometric redshift estimation using Artificial Neural Networks. ANNz learns the relation between photometry and redshift from an appropriate training set of galaxies for which the redshift is already known. Where a large and representative training set is available, ANNz is a highly competitive tool when compared with traditional template-fitting methods.

For a newer implementation of this package, please see ANNz2 (ascl:1910.014).

[ascl:1209.010] MeqTrees: Software package for implementing Measurement Equations

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.

[ascl:1209.011] DiskFit: Modeling Asymmetries in Disk Galaxies

DiskFit implements procedures for fitting non-axisymmetries in either kinematic or photometric data. DiskFit can analyze H-alpha and CO velocity field data as well as HI kinematics to search for non-circular motions in the disk galaxies. DiskFit can also be used to constrain photometric models of the disc, bar and bulge. It deprecates an earlier version, by a subset of these authors, called velfit.

[ascl:1209.012] Scanamorphos: Maps from scan observations made with bolometer arrays

Scanamorphos is an IDL program to build maps from scan observations made with bolometer arrays. Scanamorphos can post-process scan observations performed with the Herschel photometer arrays. This post-processing mainly consists in subtracting the total low-frequency noise (both its thermal and non-thermal components), masking cosmic ray hit residuals, and projecting the data onto a map. Although it was developed for Herschel, it is also applicable with minimal adjustment to scan observations made with other bolometer arrays provided they entail sufficient redundancy; it was successfully applied to P-Artemis, an instrument operating on the APEX telescope. Scanamorphos does not assume any particular noise model and does not apply any Fourier-space filtering to the data. It is an empirical tool using only the redundancy built in the observations, taking advantage of the fact that each portion of the sky is sampled at multiple times by multiple bolometers. The user is allowed to optionally visualize and control results at each intermediate step, but the processing is fully automated.

[ascl:1209.013] IRACproc: IRAC Post-BCD Processing

IRACproc is a software suite that facilitates the co-addition of dithered or mapped Spitzer/IRAC data to make them ready for further analysis with application to a wide variety of IRAC observing programs. The software runs within PDL, a numeric extension for Perl available from pdl.perl.org, and as stand alone perl scripts. In acting as a wrapper for the Spitzer Science Center's MOPEX software, IRACproc improves the rejection of cosmic rays and other transients in the co-added data. In addition, IRACproc performs (optional) Point Spread Function (PSF) fitting, subtraction, and masking of saturated stars.

[ascl:1209.014] FAMIAS: Frequency Analysis and Mode Identification for AsteroSeismology

FAMIAS (Frequency Analysis and Mode Identification for Asteroseismology) is a package of software tools programmed in C++ for the analysis of photometric and spectroscopic time-series data. FAMIAS provides analysis tools that are required for the steps between the data reduction and the seismic modeling. Two main sets of tools are incorporated in FAMIAS. The first set permits to search for periodicities in the data using Fourier and non-linear least-squares fitting techniques. The other set permits to carry out a mode identification for the detected pulsation frequencies to determine their harmonic degree l, and azimuthal order m. FAMIAS is applicable to main-sequence pulsators hotter than the Sun. This includes Gamma Dor, Delta Sct stars, slowly pulsating B (SPB)-stars and Beta Cep stars - basically all stars for which empirical mode identification is required to successfully carry out asteroseismology.

[ascl:1209.015] Aspects: Probabilistic/positional association of catalogs of sources

Given two catalogs K and K' of n and n' astrophysical sources, respectively, Aspects (Association positionnelle/probabiliste de catalogues de sources) computes, for any objects MiK and M'jK', the probability that M'j is a counterpart of Mi, i.e. that they are the same source. To determine this probability of association, the code takes into account the coordinates and the positional uncertainties of all the objects. Aspects also computes the probability P(Ai, 0 | C ∩ C') that Mi has no counterpart.

Aspects is written in Fortran 95; the required Fortran 90 Numerical Recipes routines used in version 1.0 have been replaced with free equivalents in version 2.0.

[ascl:1208.001] Astrometry.net: Astrometric calibration of images

Astrometry.net is a reliable and robust system that takes as input an astronomical image and returns as output the pointing, scale, and orientation of that image (the astrometric calibration or World Coordinate System information). The system requires no first guess, and works with the information in the image pixels alone; that is, the problem is a generalization of the "lost in space" problem in which nothing—not even the image scale—is known. After robust source detection is performed in the input image, asterisms (sets of four or five stars) are geometrically hashed and compared to pre-indexed hashes to generate hypotheses about the astrometric calibration. A hypothesis is only accepted as true if it passes a Bayesian decision theory test against a null hypothesis. With indices built from the USNO-B catalog and designed for uniformity of coverage and redundancy, the success rate is >99.9% for contemporary near-ultraviolet and visual imaging survey data, with no false positives. The failure rate is consistent with the incompleteness of the USNO-B catalog; augmentation with indices built from the Two Micron All Sky Survey catalog brings the completeness to 100% with no false positives. We are using this system to generate consistent and standards-compliant meta-data for digital and digitized imaging from plate repositories, automated observatories, individual scientific investigators, and hobbyists.

[ascl:1208.002] BINSYN: Simulating Spectra and Light Curves of Binary Systems with or without Accretion Disks

The BINSYN program suite is a collection of programs for analysis of binary star systems with or without an optically thick accretion disk. BINSYN produces synthetic spectra of individual binary star components plus a synthetic spectrum of the system. If the system includes an accretion disk, BINSYN also produces a separate synthetic spectrum of the disk face and rim. A system routine convolves the synthetic spectra with filter profiles of several photometric standards to produce absolute synthetic photometry output. The package generates synthetic light curves and determines an optimized solution for system parameters.

[ascl:1208.003] APT: Aperture Photometry Tool

Aperture Photometry Tool (APT) is software for astronomers and students interested in manually exploring the photometric qualities of astronomical images. It has a graphical user interface (GUI) which allows the image data associated with aperture photometry calculations for point and extended sources to be visualized and, therefore, more effectively analyzed. Mouse-clicking on a source in the displayed image draws a circular or elliptical aperture and sky annulus around the source and computes the source intensity and its uncertainty, along with several commonly used measures of the local sky background and its variability. The results are displayed and can be optionally saved to an aperture-photometry-table file and plotted on graphs in various ways using functions available in the software. APT is geared toward processing sources in a small number of images and is not suitable for bulk processing a large number of images, unlike other aperture photometry packages (e.g., SExtractor). However, APT does have a convenient source-list tool that enables calculations for a large number of detections in a given image. The source-list tool can be run either in automatic mode to generate an aperture photometry table quickly or in manual mode to permit inspection and adjustment of the calculation for each individual detection. APT displays a variety of useful graphs, including image histogram, and aperture slices, source scatter plot, sky scatter plot, sky histogram, radial profile, curve of growth, and aperture-photometry-table scatter plots and histograms. APT has functions for customizing calculations, including outlier rejection, pixel “picking” and “zapping,” and a selection of source and sky models. The radial-profile-interpolation source model, accessed via the radial-profile-plot panel, allows recovery of source intensity from pixels with missing data and can be especially beneficial in crowded fields.

[ascl:1208.004] PyKE: Reduction and analysis of Kepler Simple Aperture Photometry data

PyKE is a python-based PyRAF package that can also be run as a stand-alone program within a unix-based shell without compiling against PyRAF. It is a group of tasks developed for the reduction and analysis of Kepler Simple Aperture Photometry (SAP) data of individual targets with individual characteristics. The main purposes of these tasks are to i) re-extract light curves from manually-chosen pixel apertures and ii) cotrend and/or detrend the data in order to reduce or remove systematic noise structure using methods tunable to user and target-specific requirements. PyKE is an open source project and contributions of new tasks or enhanced functionality of existing tasks by the community are welcome.

[ascl:1208.005] PSM: Planck Sky Model

The Planck Sky Model (PSM) is a global representation of the multi-component sky at frequencies ranging from a few GHz to a few THz. It summarizes in a synthetic way as much of our present knowledge as possible of the GHz sky. PSM is a complete and versatile set of programs and data that can be used for the simulation or the prediction of sky emission in the frequency range of typical CMB experiments, and in particular of the Planck sky mission. It was originally developed as part of the activities of Planck component separation Working Group (or "Working Group 2" - WG2), and of the ADAMIS team at APC.

PSM gives users the opportunity to investigate the model in some depth: look at its parameters, visualize its predictions for all individual components in various formats, simulate sky emission compatible with a given parameter set, and observe the modeled sky with a synthetic instrument. In particular, it makes possible the simulation of sky emission maps as could be plausibly observed by Planck or other CMB experiments that can be used as inputs for the development and testing of data processing and analysis techniques.

[ascl:1208.006] ccogs: Cosmological Calculations on the GPU

This suite contains two packages for computing cosmological quantities on the GPU: aperture_mass, which calculates the aperture mass map for a given dataset using the filter proposed by Schirmer et al (2007) (an NFW profile with exponential cut-offs at zero and large radii), and angular_correlation, which calculates the 2-pt angular correlation function using data and a flat distribution of randomly generated galaxies. A particular estimator is chosen, but the user has the flexibility to explore other estimators.

[ascl:1208.007] Big MACS: Accurate photometric calibration

Big MACS is a Python program that estimates an accurate photometric calibration from only an input catalog of stellar magnitudes and filter transmission functions. The user does not have to measure color terms which can be difficult to characterize. Supplied with filter transmission functions, Big MACS synthesizes an expected stellar locus for your data and then simultaneously solves for all unknown zeropoints when fitting to the instrumental locus. The code uses a spectroscopic model for the SDSS stellar locus in color-color space and filter functions to compute expected locus. The stellar locus model is corrected for Milky Way reddening. If SDSS or 2MASS photometry is available for stars in field, Big MACS can yield a highly accurate absolute calibration.

[ascl:1208.008] TiRiFiC: Tilted Ring Fitting Code

Tilted Ring Fitting Code (TiRiFiC) is a prototype computer program to construct simulated (high-resolution) astronomical spectroscopic 3d-observations (data cubes) of simple kinematical and morphological models of rotating (galactic) disks. It is possible to automatically optimize the parameterizations of constructed model disks to fit spectroscopic (3d-) observations via a χ2 minimization. TiRiFiC is currently implemented as an add-on to the Groningen Image Processing System (GIPSY) software package and attempts to provide a method to automatically fit an extended tilted-ring model directly to a data cube.

[ascl:1208.009] BLOBCAT: Software to Catalog Blobs

BLOBCAT is a source extraction software that utilizes the flood fill algorithm to detect and catalog blobs, or islands of pixels representing sources, in 2D astronomical images. The software is designed to process radio-wavelength images of both Stokes I intensity and linear polarization, the latter formed through the quadrature sum of Stokes Q and U intensities or as a by-product of rotation measure synthesis. BLOBCAT corrects for two systematic biases to enable the flood fill algorithm to accurately measure flux densities for Gaussian sources. BLOBCAT exhibits accurate measurement performance in total intensity and, in particular, linear polarization, and is particularly suited to the analysis of large survey data.

[ascl:1208.010] BASE: Bayesian Astrometric and Spectroscopic Exoplanet Detection and Characterization Tool

BASE is a novel program for the combined or separate Bayesian analysis of astrometric and radial-velocity measurements of potential exoplanet hosts and binary stars. The tool fulfills two major tasks of exoplanet science, namely the detection of exoplanets and the characterization of their orbits. BASE was developed to provide the possibility of an integrated Bayesian analysis of stellar astrometric and Doppler-spectroscopic measurements with respect to their binary or planetary companions’ signals, correctly treating the astrometric measurement uncertainties and allowing to explore the whole parameter space without the need for informative prior constraints. The tool automatically diagnoses convergence of its Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC[2]) sampler to the posterior and regularly outputs status information. For orbit characterization, BASE delivers important results such as the probability densities and correlations of model parameters and derived quantities. BASE is a highly configurable command-line tool developed in Fortran 2008 and compiled with GFortran. Options can be used to control the program’s behaviour and supply information such as the stellar mass or prior information. Any option can be supplied in a configuration file and/or on the command line.

[ascl:1208.011] Fewbody: Numerical toolkit for simulating small-N gravitational dynamics

Fewbody is a numerical toolkit for simulating small-N gravitational dynamics. It is a general N-body dynamics code, although it was written for the purpose of performing scattering experiments, and therefore has several features that make it well-suited for this purpose. Fewbody uses the 8th-order Runge-Kutta Prince-Dormand integration method with 9th-order error estimate and adaptive timestep to advance the N-body system forward in time. It integrates the usual formulation of the N-body equations in configuration space, but allows for the option of global pairwise Kustaanheimo-Stiefel (K-S) regularization (Heggie 1974; Mikkola 1985). The code uses a binary tree algorithm to classify the N-body system into a set of independently bound hierarchies, and performs collisions between stars in the “sticky star” approximation. Fewbody contains a collection of command line utilities that can be used to perform individual scattering and N-body interactions, but is more generally a library of functions that can be used from within other codes.

[ascl:1208.012] Swarm-NG: Parallel n-body Integrations

Swarm-NG is a C++ library for the efficient direct integration of many n-body systems using highly-parallel Graphics Processing Units (GPU). Swarm-NG focuses on many few-body systems, e.g., thousands of systems with 3...15 bodies each, as is typical for the study of planetary systems; the code parallelizes the simulation, including both the numerical integration of the equations of motion and the evaluation of forces using NVIDIA's "Compute Unified Device Architecture" (CUDA) on the GPU. Swarm-NG includes optimized implementations of 4th order time-symmetrized Hermite integration and mixed variable symplectic integration as well as several sample codes for other algorithms to illustrate how non-CUDA-savvy users may themselves introduce customized integrators into the Swarm-NG framework. Applications of Swarm-NG include studying the late stages of planet formation, testing the stability of planetary systems and evaluating the goodness-of-fit between many planetary system models and observations of extrasolar planet host stars (e.g., radial velocity, astrometry, transit timing). While Swarm-NG focuses on the parallel integration of many planetary systems,the underlying integrators could be applied to a wide variety of problems that require repeatedly integrating a set of ordinary differential equations many times using different initial conditions and/or parameter values.

[ascl:1208.013] SolarSoft: Programming and data analysis environment for solar physics

SolarSoft is a set of integrated software libraries, data bases, and system utilities which provide a common programming and data analysis environment for Solar Physics. The SolarSoftWare (SSW) system is built from Yohkoh, SOHO, SDAC and Astronomy libraries and draws upon contributions from many members of those projects. It is primarily an IDL based system, although some instrument teams integrate executables written in other languages. The SSW environment provides a consistent look and feel at widely distributed co-investigator institutions to facilitate data exchange and to stimulate coordinated analysis. Commonalities and overlap in solar data and analysis goals are exploited to permit application of fundamental utilities to the data from many different solar instruments. The use of common libraries, utilities, techniques and interfaces minimizes the learning curve for investigators who are analyzing new solar data sets, correlating results from multiple experiments or performing research away from their home institution.

[ascl:1208.014] MPI-AMRVAC: MPI-Adaptive Mesh Refinement-Versatile Advection Code

MPI-AMRVAC is an MPI-parallelized Adaptive Mesh Refinement code, with some heritage (in the solver part) to the Versatile Advection Code or VAC, initiated by Gábor Tóth at the Astronomical Institute at Utrecht in November 1994, with help from Rony Keppens since 1996. Previous incarnations of the Adaptive Mesh Refinement version of VAC were of restricted use only, and have been used for basic research in AMR strategies, or for well-targeted applications. This MPI version uses a full octree block-based approach, and allows for general orthogonal coordinate systems. MPI-AMRVAC aims to advance any system of (primarily hyperbolic) partial differential equations by a number of different numerical schemes. The emphasis is on (near) conservation laws, with shock-dominated problems as a main research target. The actual equations are stored in separate modules, can be added if needed, and they can be selected by a simple configuration of the VACPP preprocessor. The dimensionality of the problem is also set through VACPP. The numerical schemes are able to handle discontinuities and smooth flows as well.

[ascl:1208.015] Lare3d: Lagrangian-Eulerian remap scheme for MHD

Lare3d is a Lagrangian-remap code for solving the non-linear MHD equations in three spatial dimensions.

[ascl:1208.016] VARTOOLS: Light Curve Analysis Program

The VARTOOLS program is a command line utility that provides tools for analyzing time series astronomical data. It implements a number of routines for calculating variability/periodicity statistics of light curves, as well as tools for modifying and filtering light curves.

[ascl:1208.017] APLpy: Astronomical Plotting Library in Python

APLpy (the Astronomical Plotting Library in Python) is a Python module for producing publication-quality plots of astronomical imaging data in FITS format. The module uses Matplotlib, a powerful and interactive plotting package. It is capable of creating output files in several graphical formats, including EPS, PDF, PS, PNG, and SVG. Plots can be made interactively or by using scripts, and can generate co-aligned FITS cubes to make three-color RGB images. It also offers different overlay capabilities, including contour sets, markers with customizable symbols, and coordinate grids, and a range of other useful features.

[ascl:1208.018] CUBEP3M: High performance P3M N-body code

CUBEP3M is a high performance cosmological N-body code which has many utilities and extensions, including a runtime halo finder, a non-Gaussian initial conditions generator, a tuneable accuracy, and a system of unique particle identification. CUBEP3M is fast, has a memory imprint up to three times lower than other widely used N-body codes, and has been run on up to 20,000 cores, achieving close to ideal weak scaling even at this problem size. It is well suited and has already been used for a broad number of science applications that require either large samples of non-linear realizations or very large dark matter N-body simulations, including cosmological reionization, baryonic acoustic oscillations, weak lensing or non-Gaussian statistics.

[ascl:1208.019] MPFIT: Robust non-linear least squares curve fitting

These IDL routines provide a robust and relatively fast way to perform least-squares curve and surface fitting. The algorithms are translated from MINPACK-1, which is a rugged minimization routine found on Netlib, and distributed with permission. This algorithm is more desirable than CURVEFIT because it is generally more stable and less likely to crash than the brute-force approach taken by CURVEFIT, which is based upon Numerical Recipes.

[ascl:1208.020] ParselTongue: AIPS Python Interface

ParselTongue is a Python interface to classic AIPS, Obit and possibly other task-based data reduction packages. It serves as the software infrastructure for some of the ALBUS implementation. It allows you to run AIPS tasks, and access AIPS headers and extension tables from Python. There is also support for running Obit tasks and accessing data in FITS files. Full access to the visibilities in AIPS UV data is also available.

[ascl:1208.021] EzGal: A Flexible Interface for Stellar Population Synthesis Models

EzGal is a flexible Python program which generates observable parameters (magnitudes, colors, and mass-to-light ratios) for arbitrary input stellar population synthesis (SPS) models; it enables simple, direct comparison of different model sets so that the uncertainty introduced by choice of model set can be quantified. EzGal is also capable of generating composite stellar population models (CSPs) for arbitrary input star-formation histories and reddening laws, and can be used to interpolate between metallicities for a given model set.

[ascl:1207.001] EXOFAST: Fast transit and/or RV fitter for single exoplanet

EXOFAST is a fast, robust suite of routines written in IDL which is designed to fit exoplanetary transits and radial velocity variations simultaneously or separately, and characterize the parameter uncertainties and covariances with a Differential Evolution Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. Our code self-consistently incorporates both data sets to simultaneously derive stellar parameters along with the transit and RV parameters, resulting in consistent, but tighter constraints on an example fit of the discovery data of HAT-P-3b that is well-mixed in under two minutes on a standard desktop computer. EXOFAST has an easy-to-use online interface for several basic features of our transit and radial velocity fitting. A more robust version of EXOFAST, EXOFASTv2 (ascl:1710.003), is also available.

[ascl:1207.002] HiGPUs: Hermite's N-body integrator running on Graphic Processing Units

HiGPUs is an implementation of the numerical integration of the classical, gravitational, N-body problem, based on a 6th order Hermite’s integration scheme with block time steps, with a direct evaluation of the particle-particle forces. The main innovation of this code is its full parallelization, exploiting both OpenMP and MPI in the use of the multicore Central Processing Units as well as either Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) or OpenCL for the hosted Graphic Processing Units. We tested both performance and accuracy of the code using up to 256 GPUs in the supercomputer IBM iDataPlex DX360M3 Linux Infiniband Cluster provided by the italian supercomputing consortium CINECA, for values of N ≤ 8 millions. We were able to follow the evolution of a system of 8 million bodies for few crossing times, task previously unreached by direct summation codes.

HiGPUs is also available as part of the AMUSE project.

[ascl:1207.003] VAC: Versatile Advection Code

The Versatile Advection Code (VAC) is a freely available general hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic simulation software that works in 1, 2 or 3 dimensions on Cartesian and logically Cartesian grids. VAC runs on any Unix/Linux system with a Fortran 90 (or 77) compiler and Perl interpreter. VAC can run on parallel machines using either the Message Passing Interface (MPI) library or a High Performance Fortran (HPF) compiler.

[ascl:1207.004] Hyperion: Parallelized 3D Dust Continuum Radiative Transfer Code

Hyperion is a three-dimensional dust continuum Monte-Carlo radiative transfer code that is designed to be as generic as possible, allowing radiative transfer to be computed through a variety of three-dimensional grids. The main part of the code is problem-independent, and only requires an arbitrary three-dimensional density structure, dust properties, the position and properties of the illuminating sources, and parameters controlling the running and output of the code. Hyperion is parallelized, and is shown to scale well to thousands of processes. Two common benchmark models for protoplanetary disks were computed, and the results are found to be in excellent agreement with those from other codes. Finally, to demonstrate the capabilities of the code, dust temperatures, SEDs, and synthetic multi-wavelength images were computed for a dynamical simulation of a low-mass star formation region.

[ascl:1207.005] L.A.Cosmic: Laplacian Cosmic Ray Identification

Conventional algorithms for rejecting cosmic rays in single CCD exposures rely on the contrast between cosmic rays and their surroundings and may produce erroneous results if the point-spread function is smaller than the largest cosmic rays. This code uses a robust algorithm for cosmic-ray rejection, based on a variation of Laplacian edge detection. The algorithm identifies cosmic rays of arbitrary shapes and sizes by the sharpness of their edges and reliably discriminates between poorly sampled point sources and cosmic rays. Examples of its performance are given for spectroscopic and imaging data, including Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 images, in the code paper.

[ascl:1207.006] dcr: Cosmic Ray Removal

This code provides a method for detecting cosmic rays in single images. The algorithm is based on a simple analysis of the histogram of the image data and does not use any modeling of the picture of the object. It does not require a good signal-to-noise ratio in the image data. Identification of multiple-pixel cosmic-ray hits is realized by running the procedure for detection and replacement iteratively. The method is very effective when applied to the images with spectroscopic data, and is also very fast in comparison with other single-image algorithms found in astronomical data-processing packages. Practical implementation and examples of application are presented in the code paper.

[ascl:1207.007] Astropysics: Astrophysics utilities for python

Astropysics is a library containing a variety of utilities and algorithms for reducing, analyzing, and visualizing astronomical data. Best of all, it encourages the user to leverage the existing capabilities of Python to make this quick, easy, and as painless as cutting-edge science can even actually be. There do exist other Python packages with some of the capabilities of this project, but the goal of this project is to integrate all these tools together and make them interact in the most straightforward ways possible.

[ascl:1207.008] xSonify: Sonification software

xSonify maps scientific data to acoustic sequences. Listening to data can help discover patterns in huge amounts of data. Written in Java, xSonify allows visually impaired people to examine numerical data for patterns. The data can be imported from local files or from remote databases via the Internet. Single results of measurements from spacecraft instruments can be selected by their corresponding variables in a specific time frame. The results are transformed into MIDI sequences which can be played with a selection of different instruments from a soundbank. Another software module enables xSonify to convert the sonified data into other sound formats to make it easier to archive and exchange the Sonification results with other scientists.

[ascl:1207.009] PyFITS: Python FITS Module

PyFITS provides an interface to FITS formatted files in the Python scripting language and PyRAF, the Python-based interface to IRAF. It is useful both for interactive data analysis and for writing analysis scripts in Python using FITS files as either input or output. PyFITS is a development project of the Science Software Branch at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

PyFITS has been deprecated. Please see Astropy.

[ascl:1207.010] PySALT: SALT science pipeline

The PySALT user package contains the primary reduction and analysis software tools for the SALT telescope. Currently, these tools include basic data reductions for RSS and SALTICAM in both imaging, spectroscopic, and slot modes. Basic analysis software for slot mode data is also provided. These tools are primarily written in python/PyRAF with some additional IRAF code.

[ascl:1207.011] PyRAF: Python alternative for IRAF

PyRAF is a command language for running IRAF tasks that is based on the Python scripting language. It gives users the ability to run IRAF tasks in an environment that has all the power and flexibility of Python. PyRAF can be installed along with an existing IRAF installation; users can then choose to run either PyRAF or the IRAF CL.

[ascl:1207.012] PCA: Principal Component Analysis for spectra modeling

The mid-infrared spectra of ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) contain a variety of spectral features that can be used as diagnostics to characterize the spectra. However, such diagnostics are biased by our prior prejudices on the origin of the features. Moreover, by using only part of the spectrum they do not utilize the full information content of the spectra. Blind statistical techniques such as principal component analysis (PCA) consider the whole spectrum, find correlated features and separate them out into distinct components.

This code, written in IDL, classifies principal components of IRS spectra to define a new classification scheme using 5D Gaussian mixtures modelling. The five PCs and average spectra for the four classifications to classify objects are made available with the code.

[ascl:1207.013] JKTEBOP: Analyzing light curves of detached eclipsing binaries

The JKTEBOP code is used to fit a model to the light curves of detached eclipsing binary stars in order to derive the radii of the stars as well as various other quantities. It is very stable and includes extensive Monte Carlo or bootstrapping error analysis algorithms. It is also excellent for transiting extrasolar planetary systems. All input and output is done by text files; JKTEBOP is written in almost-standard FORTRAN 77 using first the g77 compiler and now the ifort compiler.

[ascl:1207.014] wvrgcal: Correction of atmospheric phase fluctuations in ALMA observations

wvrgcal is a command line front end to LibAIR, the atmospheric inference library for phase correction of ALMA data using water vapour radiometers, and is the user-facing application for calculating atmospheric phase correction from WVR data. wvrgcal outputs a CASA gain calibration table which can then be applied to the observed data in the usual way.

Note: wvrgcal has been incorporated into the NRAO CASA suite.

[ascl:1206.001] RegiStax: Alignment, stacking and processing of images

RegiStax is software for alignment/stacking/processing of images; it was released over 10 years ago and continues to be developed and improved. The current version is RegiStax 6, which supports the following formats: AVI, SER, RFL (RegiStax Framelist), BMP, JPG, TIF, and FIT. This version has a shorter and simpler processing sequence than its predecessor, and optimizing isn't necessary anymore as a new image alignment method optimizes directly. The interface of RegiStax 6 has been simplified to look more uniform in appearance and functionality, and RegiStax 6 now uses Multi-core processing, allowing the user to have up to have multiple cores(recommended to use maximally 4) working simultaneous during alignment/stacking.

[ascl:1206.002] FITS Liberator: Image processing software

The ESA/ESO/NASA FITS Liberator makes it possible to process and edit astronomical science data in the FITS format to produce stunning images of the universe. Formerly a plugin for Adobe Photoshop, the current version of FITS Liberator is a stand-alone application and no longer requires Photoshop. This image processing software makes it possible to create color images using raw observations from a range of telescopes; the FITS Liberator continues to support the FITS and PDS formats, preferred by astronomers and planetary scientists respectively, which enables data to be processed from a wide range of telescopes and planetary probes, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, ESA’s XMM–Newton Telescope and Cassini–Huygens or Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

[ascl:1206.003] STSDAS: IRAF Tools for Hubble Space Telescope data reduction

The Space Telescope Science Data Analysis System (STSDAS) is a software package for reducing and analyzing astronomical data. It is layered on top of IRAF and provides general-purpose tools for astronomical data analysis as well as routines specifically designed for HST data. In particular, STSDAS contains all the programs used for the calibration and reduction of HST data in the STScI post-observation processing pipelines.

[ascl:1206.004] MOLSCAT: MOLecular SCATtering v. 14

MOLSCAT version 14 is a FORTRAN code for quantum mechanical (coupled channel) solution of the nonreactive molecular scattering problem and was developed to obtain collision rates for molecules in the interstellar gas which are needed to understand microwave and infrared astronomical observations. The code is implemented for various types of collision partners. In addition to the essentially exact close coupling method several approximate methods, including the Coupled States and Infinite Order Sudden approximations, are provided. This version of the code has been superseded by MOLSCAT 2020 (ascl:2010.001).

[ascl:1206.005] bhint: High-precision integrator for stellar systems

bhint is a post-Newtonian, high-precision integrator for stellar systems surrounding a super-massive black hole. The algorithm makes use of the fact that the Keplerian orbits in such a potential can be calculated directly and are only weakly perturbed. For a given average number of steps per orbit, bhint is almost a factor of 100 more accurate than the standard Hermite method.

[ascl:1206.006] statpl: Goodness-of-fit for power-law distributed data

statpl estimates the parameter of power-law distributed data and calculates goodness-of-fit tests for them. Many objects studied in astronomy follow a power-law distribution function (DF), for example the masses of stars or star clusters. Such data is often analyzed by generating a histogram and fitting a straight line to it. The parameters obtained in this way can be severely biased, and the properties of the underlying DF, such as its shape or a possible upper limit, are difficult to extract. statpl is an (effectively) bias-free estimator for the exponent and the upper limit.

[ascl:1206.007] Plumix: Generating mass segregated star clusters

Plumix is a small package for generating mass segregated star clusters. Its output can be directly used as input initial conditions for NBODY4 or NBODY6 code. Mass segregation stands as one of the most robust features of the dynamical evolution of self-gravitating star clusters. We formulate parametrized models of mass segregated star clusters in virial equilibrium. To this purpose we introduce mean inter-particle potentials for statistically described unsegregated systems and suggest a single-parameter generalization of its form which gives a mass-segregated state. Plumix is a numerical C-code generating the cluster according the algorithm given for construction of appropriate star cluster models. Their stability over several crossing-times is verified by following the evolution by means of direct N-body integration.

[ascl:1206.008] Catena: Ensemble of stars orbit integration

Catena integrates the orbits of an ensemble of stars using the chain-regularization method (Mikkola & Aarseth) with an embedded Runge-Kutta integration method of 9(8)th order (Prince & Dormand).

[ascl:1206.009] Libimf

Libimf provides a collection of programming functions based on the general IMF-algorithm by Pflamm-Altenburg & Kroupa (2006).

[ascl:1206.010] mkj_libs: Helper routines for plane-fitting & analysis tools

mkj_libs provides a set of helper routines (vector operations, astrometry, statistical analysis of spherical data) for the main plane-fitting and analysis tools.

[ascl:1206.011] Double Eclipsing Binary Fitting

The parameters of the mutual orbit of eclipsing binaries that are physically connected can be obtained by precision timing of minima over time through light travel time effect, apsidal motion or orbital precession. This, however, requires joint analysis of data from different sources obtained through various techniques and with insufficiently quantified uncertainties. In particular, photometric uncertainties are often underestimated, which yields too small uncertainties in minima timings if determined through analysis of a χ2 surface. The task is even more difficult for double eclipsing binaries, especially those with periods close to a resonance such as CzeV344, where minima get often blended with each other.

This code solves the double binary parameters simultaneously and then uses these parameters to determine minima timings (or more specifically O-C values) for individual datasets. In both cases, the uncertainties (or more precisely confidence intervals) are determined through bootstrap resampling of the original data. This procedure to a large extent alleviates the common problem with underestimated photometric uncertainties and provides a check on possible degeneracies in the parameters and the stability of the results. While there are shortcomings to this method as well when compared to Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods, the ease of the implementation of bootstrapping is a significant advantage.

[ascl:1206.012] Time Utilities

Time Utilities are software tools that, in principal, allow one to calculate BJD to a precision of 1 μs for any target from anywhere on Earth or from any spacecraft. As the quality and quantity of astrophysical data continue to improve, the precision with which certain astrophysical events can be timed becomes limited not by the data themselves, but by the manner, standard, and uniformity with which time itself is referenced. While some areas of astronomy (most notably pulsar studies) have required absolute time stamps with precisions of considerably better than 1 minute for many decades, recently new areas have crossed into this regime. In particular, in the exoplanet community, we have found that the (typically unspecified) time standards adopted by various groups can differ by as much as a minute. Left uncorrected, this ambiguity may be mistaken for transit timing variations and bias eccentricity measurements. We recommend using BJD_TDB, the Barycentric Julian Date in the Barycentric Dynamical Time standard for any astrophysical event. The BJD_TDB is the most practical absolute time stamp for extraterrestrial phenomena, and is ultimately limited by the properties of the target system. We compile a general summary of factors that must be considered in order to achieve timing precisions ranging from 15 minutes to 1 μs, and provide software for download and online webapps for use.

[ascl:1206.013] ImageJ: Image processing and analysis in Java

ImageJ is a public domain Java image processing program inspired by NIH Image. It can display, edit, analyze, process, save and print 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit images. It can read many image formats including TIFF, GIF, JPEG, BMP, DICOM, FITS and "raw". It supports "stacks", a series of images that share a single window. It is multithreaded, so time-consuming operations such as image file reading can be performed in parallel with other operations.

[ascl:1206.014] ImageHealth: Quality Assurance for Large FITS Images

ImageHealth (IH) is a c program that makes use of standard CFITSIO routines to examine, in an automated fashion, .FITS images with any number of extensions, find objects within those images, and determine basic parameters of those images (stellar flux, background counts, FWHM, and ellipticity, along with sky background counts) in order to provide a snapshot of the quality of those images. A variety of python wrappers have also been written to test large numbers of such images and compare the results of ImageHealth to other image analysis programs, such as SourceExtractor. Additional IH-related tools will be made available in the future.

[ascl:1205.001] Mechanic: Numerical MPI framework for dynamical astronomy

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.

[ascl:1205.002] p3d: General data-reduction tool for fiber-fed integral-field spectrographs

p3d is semi-automatic data-reduction tool designed to be used with fiber-fed integral-field spectrographs. p3d is a highly general and freely available tool based on IDL but can be used with full functionality without an IDL license. It is easily extended to include improved algorithms, new visualization tools, and support for additional instruments. It uses a novel algorithm for automatic finding and tracing of spectra on the detector, and includes two methods of optimal spectrum extraction in addition to standard aperture extraction. p3d also provides tools to combine several images, perform wavelength calibration and flat field data.

[ascl:1205.003] MIA+EWS: MIDI data reduction tool

MIA+EWS is a package of two data reduction tools for MIDI data which uses power-spectrum analysis or the information contained in the spectrally-dispersed fringe measurements in order to estimate the correlated flux and the visibility as function of wavelength in the N-band. MIA, which stands for MIDI Interactive Analysis, uses a Fast Fourier Transformation to calculate the Fourier amplitudes of the fringe packets to calculate the correlated flux and visibility. EWS stands for Expert Work-Station, which is a collection of IDL tools to apply coherent visibility analysis to reduce MIDI data. The EWS package allows the user to control and examine almost every aspect of MIDI data and its reduction. The usual data products are the correlated fluxes, total fluxes and differential phase.

[ascl:1205.004] Turbospectrum: Code for spectral synthesis

Turbospectrum is a 1D LTE spectrum synthesis code which covers 600 molecules, is fast with many lines, and uses the treatment of line broadening described by Barklem & O’Mara (1998).

[ascl:1205.005] Fv: Interactive FITS file editor

Fv is an easy-to-use graphical program for viewing and editing any FITS format image or table. The Fv software is small, completely self-contained and runs on Windows PCs, most Unix platforms and Mac OS-X. Fv also provides a portal into the Hera data analysis service from the HEASARC.

[ascl:1205.006] Flexion: IDL code for calculating gravitational flexion

Gravitational flexion is a technique for measuring 2nd order gravitational lensing signals in background galaxies and radio lobes. Unlike shear, flexion directly probes variations of the potential field. Moreover, the information contained in flexion is orthogonal to what is found in the shear. Thus, we get the information "for free."

A newer version of the code, Lenser, is available here: https://github.com/DrexelLenser/Lenser

[ascl:1205.007] Iris: The VAO SED Application

Iris is a downloadable Graphical User Interface (GUI) application which allows the astronomer to build and analyze wide-band Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs). The components of Iris have been contributed by members of the VAO. Specview, contributed by STScI, provides a GUI for reading, editing, and displaying SEDs, as well as defining models and parameter values. Sherpa, contributed by the Chandra project at SAO, provides a library of models, fit statistics, and optimization methods; the underlying I/O library, SEDLib, is a VAO product written by SAO to current IVOA (International Virtual Observatory Alliance) data model standards. NED is a service provided by IPAC for easy location of data for a given extragalactic source, including SEDs. SedImporter converts non-standard SED data files into a format supported by Iris.

[ascl:1205.008] Mayavi2: 3D Scientific Data Visualization and Plotting

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.

[ascl:1205.009] ARES: Automatic Routine for line Equivalent widths in stellar Spectra

ARES was developed for the measurement of Equivalent Width of absortion lines in stellar spectra; it can also be used to determine fundamental spectroscopic stellar parameters.The code reads a 1D FITS spectra and fits the requested lines in order to calculate the Equivalent width. The code is written in C++ based on the standard method of determining EWs. It automates the manual procedure that one normally carries out when using interactive routines such as the splot routine implemented in IRAF.

[ascl:1205.010] Meudon PDR: Atomic & molecular structure of interstellar clouds

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.

[ascl:1205.011] VOSpec: VO Spectral Analysis Tool

VOSpec is a multi-wavelength spectral analysis tool with access to spectra, theoretical models and atomic and molecular line databases registered in the VO. The standard tools of VOSpec include line and continuum fitting, redshift and reddening correction, spectral arithmetic and convolution between spectra, equivalent width and flux calculations, and a best fitting algorithm for fitting selected SEDs to a TSAP service. VOSpec offers several display modes (tree vs table) and organising functionalities according to the available metadata for each service, including distance from the observation position.

[ascl:1204.001] WM-basic: Modeling atmospheres of hot stars

WM-basic is an easy-to-use interface to a program package which models the atmospheres of Hot Stars (and also SN and GN). The release comprises all programs required to calculate model atmospheres which especially yield ionizing fluxes and synthetic spectra. WM-basic is a native 32-bit application, conforming to the Multiple Documents Interface (MDI) standards for Windows XP/2000/NT/9x. All components of the program package have been compiled with Digital Visual Fortran V6.6(Pro) and Microsoft Visual C++.

[ascl:1204.002] pyBLoCXS: Bayesian Low-Count X-ray Spectral analysis

pyBLoCXS is a sophisticated Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based algorithm designed to carry out Bayesian Low-Count X-ray Spectral (BLoCXS) analysis in the Sherpa environment. The code is a Python extension to Sherpa that explores parameter space at a suspected minimum using a predefined Sherpa model to high-energy X-ray spectral data. pyBLoCXS includes a flexible definition of priors and allows for variations in the calibration information. It can be used to compute posterior predictive p-values for the likelihood ratio test. The pyBLoCXS code has been tested with a number of simple single-component spectral models; it should be used with great care in more complex settings.

[ascl:1204.003] BUDDA: BUlge/Disk Decomposition Analysis

Budda is a Fortran code developed to perform a detailed structural analysis on galaxy images. It is simple to use and gives reliable estimates of the galaxy structural parameters, which can be used, for instance, in Fundamental Plane studies. Moreover, it has a powerful ability to reveal hidden sub-structures, like inner disks, secondary bars and nuclear rings.

[ascl:1204.004] Fosite: 2D advection problem solver

Fosite implements a method for the solution of hyperbolic conservation laws in curvilinear orthogonal coordinates. It is written in Fortran 90/95 integrating object-oriented (OO) design patterns, incorporating the flexibility of OO-programming into Fortran 90/95 while preserving the efficiency of the numerical computation. Although mainly intended for CFD simulations, Fosite's modular design allows its application to other advection problems as well. Unlike other two-dimensional implementations of finite volume methods, it accounts for local conservation of specific angular momentum. This feature turns the program into a perfect tool for astrophysical simulations where angular momentum transport is crucial. Angular momentum transport is not only implemented for standard coordinate systems with rotational symmetry (i.e. cylindrical, spherical) but also for a general set of orthogonal coordinate systems allowing the use of exotic curvilinear meshes (e.g. oblate-spheroidal). As in the case of the advection problem, this part of the software is also kept modular, therefore new geometries may be incorporated into the framework in a straightforward manner.

[ascl:1204.005] MC3D: Monte-Carlo 3D Radiative Transfer Code

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.

[ascl:1204.006] GRASIL: Spectral evolution of stellar systems with dust

GRASIL (which stands for GRAphite and SILicate) computes the spectral evolution of stellar systems taking into account the effects of dust, which absorbs and scatters optical and UV photons and emits in the IR-submm region. It may be used as well to do “standard” no-dust stellar spectral synthesis. The code is very well calibrated and applied to interpret galaxies at different redshifts. GRASIL can be downloaded or run online using the GALSYNTH WEB interface.

[ascl:1204.007] VH-1: Multidimensional ideal compressible hydrodynamics code

VH-1 is a multidimensional ideal compressible hydrodynamics code written in FORTRAN for use on any computing platform, from desktop workstations to supercomputers. It uses a Lagrangian remap version of the Piecewise Parabolic Method developed by Paul Woodward and Phil Colella in their 1984 paper. VH-1 comes in a variety of versions, from a simple one-dimensional serial variant to a multi-dimensional version scalable to thousands of processors.

[ascl:1204.008] StarFISH: For Inferring Star-formation Histories

StarFISH is a suite of programs designed to determine the star formation history (SFH) of a stellar population, given multicolor stellar photometry and a library of theoretical isochrones. It constructs a library of synthetic color-magnitude diagrams from the isochrones, which includes the effects of extinction, photometric errors and completeness, and binarity. A minimization routine is then used to determine the linear combination of synthetic CMDs that best matches the observed photometry. The set of amplitudes modulating each synthetic CMD describes the star formation history of the observed stellar population.

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