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[ascl:1010.008] midIR_sensitivity: Mid-infrared astronomy with METIS

midIR_sensitivity is IDL code that calculates the sensitivity of a ground-based mid-infrared instrument for astronomy. The code was written for the Phase A study of the instrument METIS (http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/metis), the Mid-Infrared E-ELT Imager and Spectrograph, for the 42-m European Extremely Large Telescope. The model uses a detailed set of input parameters for site characteristics and atmospheric profiles, optical design, and thermal background. The code and all input parameters are highly tailored for the particular design parameters of the E-ELT and METIS, however, the program is structured in such a way that the parameters can easily be adjusted for a different system, or alternative input files used.

[ascl:1010.009] ModeCode: Bayesian Parameter Estimation for Inflation

ModeCode is a publicly available code that computes the primordial scalar and tensor power spectra for single field inflationary models. ModeCode solves the inflationary mode equations numerically, avoiding the slow roll approximation. It provides an efficient and robust numerical evaluation of the inflationary perturbation spectrum, and allows the free parameters in the inflationary potential to be estimated within an MCMC computation. ModeCode also allows the estimation of reheating uncertainties once a potential has been specified. It is interfaced with CAMB and CosmoMC to compute cosmic microwave background angular power spectra and perform likelihood analysis and parameter estimation. It can be run as a standalone code as well. Errors in the results from ModeCode contribute negligibly to the error budget for analyses of data from Planck or other next generation experiments.

[ascl:1010.010] Fast WMAP Likelihood Code and GSR PC Functions

We place functional constraints on the shape of the inflaton potential from the cosmic microwave background through a variant of the generalized slow roll approximation that allows large amplitude, rapidly changing deviations from scale-free conditions. Employing a principal component decomposition of the source function G'~3(V'/V)^2 - 2V''/V and keeping only those measured to better than 10% results in 5 nearly independent Gaussian constraints that maybe used to test any single-field inflationary model where such deviations are expected. The first component implies < 3% variations at the 100 Mpc scale. One component shows a 95% CL preference for deviations around the 300 Mpc scale at the ~10% level but the global significance is reduced considering the 5 components examined. This deviation also requires a change in the cold dark matter density which in a flat LCDM model is disfavored by current supernova and Hubble constant data and can be tested with future polarization or high multipole temperature data. Its impact resembles a local running of the tilt from multipoles 30-800 but is only marginally consistent with a constant running beyond this range. For this analysis, we have implemented a ~40x faster WMAP7 likelihood method which we have made publicly available.

[ascl:1010.011] PSpectRe: A Pseudo-Spectral Code for (P)reheating

PSpectRe, written in C++, uses Fourier-space pseudo-spectral methods to evolve interacting scalar fields in an expanding universe. The code is optimized for the analysis of parametric resonance in the post-inflationary universe and provides an alternative to finite differencing codes. PSpectRe has both second- (Velocity-Verlet) and fourth-order (Runge-Kutta) time integrators. In some circumstances PSpectRe obtains reliable results while using substantially fewer points than a finite differencing code by computing the post-resonance equation of state. PSpectRe is designed to be easily extended to other problems in early-universe cosmology, including the generation of gravitational waves during phase transitions and pre-inflationary bubble collisions.

[ascl:1010.012] glafic: Software Package for Analyzing Gravitational Lensing

glafic is a public software package for analyzing gravitational lensing. It offers many features including computations of various lens properties for many mass models, solving the lens equation using an adaptive grid algorithm, simulations of lensed extended images with PSF convolved, and efficient modeling of observed strong lens systems.

[ascl:1010.013] AstroGK: Astrophysical Gyrokinetics Code

The gyrokinetic simulation code AstroGK is developed to study fundamental aspects of kinetic plasmas and for applications mainly to astrophysical problems. AstroGK is an Eulerian slab code that solves the electromagnetic Gyrokinetic-Maxwell equations in five-dimensional phase space, and is derived from the existing gyrokinetics code GS2 by removing magnetic geometry effects. Algorithms used in the code are described. The code is benchmarked using linear and nonlinear problems. Serial and parallel performance scalings are also presented.

[ascl:1010.014] Athena: Grid-based code for astrophysical magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)

Athena is a grid-based code for astrophysical magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). It was developed primarily for studies of the interstellar medium, star formation, and accretion flows. The code has been designed to be easily extensible for use with static and adaptive mesh refinement. It combines higher-order Godunov methods with the constrained transport (CT) technique to enforce the divergence-free constraint on the magnetic field. Discretization is based on cell-centered volume-averages for mass, momentum, and energy, and face-centered area-averages for the magnetic field. Novel features of the algorithm include (1) a consistent framework for computing the time- and edge-averaged electric fields used by CT to evolve the magnetic field from the time- and area-averaged Godunov fluxes, (2) the extension to MHD of spatial reconstruction schemes that involve a dimensionally-split time advance, and (3) the extension to MHD of two different dimensionally-unsplit integration methods. Implementation of the algorithm in both C and Fortran95 is detailed, including strategies for parallelization using domain decomposition. Results from a test suite which includes problems in one-, two-, and three-dimensions for both hydrodynamics and MHD are given, not only to demonstrate the fidelity of the algorithms, but also to enable comparisons to other methods. The source code is freely available for download on the web.

[ascl:1010.015] Fyris Alpha: Computational Fluid Dynamics Code

Fyris Alpha is a high resolution, shock capturing, multi-phase, up-wind Godunov method hydrodynamics code that includes a variable equation of state and optional microphysics such as cooling, gravity and multiple tracer variables. The code has been designed and developed for use primarily in astrophysical applications, such as galactic and interstellar bubbles, hypersonic shocks, and a range of jet phenomena. Fyris Alpha boasts both higher performance and more detailed microphysics than its predecessors, with the aim of producing output that is closer to the observational domain, such as emission line fluxes, and eventually, detailed spectral synthesis. Fyris Alpha is approximately 75,000 lines of C code; it encapsulates the split sweep semi-lagrangian remap PPM method used by ppmlr (in turn developed from VH1, Blondin et al. 1998) but with an improved Riemann solver, which is derived from the exact solver of Gottlieb and Groth (1988), a significantly faster solution than previous solvers. It has a number of optimisations that have improved the speed so that additional calculations neeed for multi-phase simulations become practical.

[ascl:1010.016] SpDust/SpDust.2: Code to Calculate Spinning Dust Spectra

SpDust is an IDL program that evaluates the spinning dust emissivity for user-provided environmental conditions. A new version of the code became available in March, 2010.

[ascl:1010.017] AOFlagger: RFI Software

The radio frequency interference code AOFlagger automatically flags data and can be used to analyze the data in a measurement. The purpose of flagging is to mark samples that are affected by interfering sources such as radio stations, airplanes, electrical fences or other transmitting interferers.

The tools in the package are meant for offline use. The software package contains a graphical interface ("rfigui") that can be used to visualize a measurement set and analyze mitigation techniques. It also contains a console flagger ("rficonsole") that can execute a script of mitigation functions without the overhead of a graphical environment. All tools were written in C++.

The software has been tested extensively on low radio frequencies (150 MHz or lower) produced by the WSRT and LOFAR telescopes. LOFAR is the Low Frequency Array that is built in and around the Netherlands. Higher frequencies should work as well. Some of the methods implemented are the SumThreshold, the VarThreshold and the singular value decomposition (SVD) method. Included also are several surface fitting algorithms.

The software is published under the GNU General Public License version 3.

[ascl:1010.018] Emu CMB: Power spectrum emulator

Emu CMB is a fast emulator the CMB temperature power spectrum based on CAMB (ascl:1102.026, Jan 2010 version). Emu CMB is based on a "space-filling" Orthogonal Array Latin Hypercube design in a de-correlated parameter space obtained by using a fiducial WMAP5 CMB Fisher matrix as a rotation matrix. This design strategy allows for accurate interpolation with small numbers of simulation design points. The emulator presented here is calibrated with 100 CAMB runs that are interpolated over the design space using a global quadratic polynomial fit.

[ascl:1010.019] NBSymple: A Double Parallel, Symplectic N-body Code Running on Graphic Processing Units

NBSymple is a numerical code which numerically integrates the equation of motions of N 'particles' interacting via Newtonian gravitation and move in an external galactic smooth field. The force evaluation on every particle is done by mean of direct summation of the contribution of all the other system's particle, avoiding truncation error. The time integration is done with second-order and sixth-order symplectic schemes. NBSymple has been parallelized twice, by mean of the Computer Unified Device Architecture to make the all-pair force evaluation as fast as possible on high-performance Graphic Processing Units NVIDIA TESLA C 1060, while the O(N) computations are distributed on various CPUs by mean of OpenMP Application Program. The code works both in single precision floating point arithmetics or in double precision. The use of single precision allows the use at best of the GPU performances but, of course, limits the precision of simulation in some critical situations. We find a good compromise in using a software reconstruction of double precision for those variables that are most critical for the overall precision of the code.

[ascl:1010.020] Libpsht: Algorithms for Efficient Spherical Harmonic Transforms

Libpsht (or "library for Performing Spherical Harmonic Transforms") is a collection of algorithms for efficient conversion between spatial-domain and spectral-domain representations of data defined on the sphere. The package supports transforms of scalars as well as spin-1 and spin-2 quantities, and can be used for a wide range of pixelisations (including HEALPix, GLESP and ECP). It will take advantage of hardware features like multiple processor cores and floating-point vector operations, if available. Even without this additional acceleration, the employed algorithms are among the most efficient (in terms of CPU time as well as memory consumption) currently being used in the astronomical community.

The library is written in strictly standard-conforming C90, ensuring portability to many different hard- and software platforms, and allowing straightforward integration with codes written in various programming languages like C, C++, Fortran, Python etc.

Libpsht is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

Development on this project has ended; its successor is libsharp (ascl:1402.033).

[ascl:1010.021] velfit: A Code for Modeling Non-Circular Flows in Disk Galaxies

High-quality velocity maps of galaxies frequently exhibit signatures of non-circular streaming motions. velfit yields results that are more easily interpreted than the commonly used procedure. It can estimate the magnitudes of forced non-circular motions over a broad range of bar strengths from a strongly barred galaxy, through cases of mild bar-like distortions to placing bounds on the shapes of halos in galaxies having extended rotation curves.

This code is no longer maintained and has been superseded by DiskFit (ascl:1209.011).

[ascl:1010.022] GR1D: Open-Source Code for Spherically-Symmetric Stellar Collapse to Neutron Stars and Black Holes

GR1D is based on the Eulerian formulation of GR hydrodynamics (GRHD) put forth by Romero-Ibanez-Gourgoulhon and employs radial-gauge, polar-slicing coordinates in which the 3+1 equations simplify substantially. GR1D is intended for the simulation of stellar collapse to neutron stars and black holes and will also serve as a testbed for modeling technology to be incorporated in multi-D GR codes. Its GRHD part is coupled to various finite-temperature microphysical equations of state in tabulated form that we make available with GR1D.

[ascl:1010.023] AstroSim: Collaborative Visualization of an Astrophysics Simulation in Second Life

AstroSim is a Second Life based prototype application for synchronous collaborative visualization targeted at astronomers.

[ascl:1010.024] ADAPTSMOOTH: A Code for the Adaptive Smoothing of Astronomical Images

ADAPTSMOOTH serves to smooth astronomical images in an adaptive fashion in order to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N). The adaptive smoothing scheme allows taking full advantage of the spatially resolved photometric information contained in an image in that at any location the minimal smoothing is applied to reach the requested S/N. Support is given to match more images on the same smoothing length, such that proper estimates of local colors can be done, with a big potential impact on multi-wavelength studies of extended sources (galaxies, nebulae). Different modes to estimate local S/N are provided. In addition to classical arithmetic-mean averaging mode, the code can operate in median averaging mode, resulting in a significant enhancement of the final image quality and very accurate flux conservation.

[ascl:1010.025] SimFast21: Simulation of the Cosmological 21cm Signal

SimFast 21 generates a simulation of the cosmological 21cm signal. While limited to low spatial resolution, the next generation low-frequency radio interferometers that target 21 cm observations during the era of reionization and prior will have instantaneous fields-of-view that are many tens of square degrees on the sky. Predictions related to various statistical measurements of the 21 cm brightness temperature must then be pursued with numerical simulations of reionization with correspondingly large volume box sizes, of order 1000 Mpc on one side. The authors pursued a semi-numerical scheme to simulate the 21 cm signal during and prior to Reionization by extending a hybrid approach where simulations are performed by first laying down the linear dark matter density field, accounting for the non-linear evolution of the density field based on second-order linear perturbation theory as specified by the Zel'dovich approximation, and then specifying the location and mass of collapsed dark matter halos using the excursion-set formalism. The location of ionizing sources and the time evolving distribution of ionization field is also specified using an excursion-set algorithm. They account for the brightness temperature evolution through the coupling between spin and gas temperature due to collisions, radiative coupling in the presence of Lyman-alpha photons and heating of the intergalactic medium, such as due to a background of X-ray photons. The method is capable of producing the required large volume simulations with adequate resolution in a reasonable time so a large number of realizations can be obtained with variations in assumptions related to astrophysics and background cosmology that govern the 21 cm signal.

[ascl:1010.026] SingLe: A F90-package devoted to Softened Gravity in gaseous discs

SofteningLength: Because Newton's law of Gravitation diverges as the relative separations |r'-r| tends to zero, it is common to add a positive constant λ also known as the "softening length", i.e. :

|r'-r|² ← |r'-r|² + λ².

SingLe determines the appropriate value of this Softening Length λ for a given disc local structure (thickness 2h and vertical stratification ρ), in the axially symmetric, flat disc limit, preserving at best the Newtonian character of the gravitational potential and associated forces. Mass density ρ(z) is assumed to be locally expandable in the z-direction according to:

ρ(z)= ρ0[1 + a1(z/h)2+...+aq (z/h)2q+...+aN (z/h)2 N].

[ascl:1010.027] SNANA: A Public Software Package for Supernova Analysis

SNANA is a general analysis package for supernova (SN) light curves that contains a simulation, light curve fitter, and cosmology fitter. The software is designed with the primary goal of using SNe Ia as distance indicators for the determination of cosmological parameters, but it can also be used to study efficiencies for analyses of SN rates, estimate contamination from non-Ia SNe, and optimize future surveys. Several SN models are available within the same software architecture, allowing technical features such as K-corrections to be consistently used among multiple models, and thus making it easier to make detailed comparisons between models. New and improved light-curve models can be easily added. The software works with arbitrary surveys and telescopes and has already been used by several collaborations, leading to more robust and easy-to-use code. This software is not intended as a final product release, but rather it is designed to undergo continual improvements from the community as more is learned about SNe.

[ascl:1010.028] GALPROP: Code for Cosmic-ray Transport and Diffuse Emission Production

GALPROP is a numerical code for calculating the propagation of relativistic charged particles and the diffuse emissions produced during their propagation. The GALPROP code incorporates as much realistic astrophysical input as possible together with latest theoretical developments. The code calculates the propagation of cosmic-ray nuclei, antiprotons, electrons and positrons, and computes diffuse γ-rays and synchrotron emission in the same framework. Each run of the code is governed by a configuration file allowing the user to specify and control many details of the calculation. Thus, each run of the code corresponds to a potentially different "model." The code continues to be developed and is available to the scientific community.

[ascl:1010.029] DNEST: Diffusive Nested Sampling

This code is a general Monte Carlo method based on Nested Sampling (NS) for sampling complex probability distributions and estimating the normalising constant. The method uses one or more particles, which explore a mixture of nested probability distributions, each successive distribution occupying ~e^-1 times the enclosed prior mass of the previous distribution. While NS technically requires independent generation of particles, Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) exploration fits naturally into this technique. This method can achieve four times the accuracy of classic MCMC-based Nested Sampling, for the same computational effort; equivalent to a factor of 16 speedup. An additional benefit is that more samples and a more accurate evidence value can be obtained simply by continuing the run for longer, as in standard MCMC.

[ascl:1010.030] CosmicEmu: Cosmic Emulator for the Dark Matter Power Spectrum

Many of the most exciting questions in astrophysics and cosmology, including the majority of observational probes of dark energy, rely on an understanding of the nonlinear regime of structure formation. In order to fully exploit the information available from this regime and to extract cosmological constraints, accurate theoretical predictions are needed. Currently such predictions can only be obtained from costly, precision numerical simulations. The "Coyote Universe'' simulation suite comprises nearly 1,000 N-body simulations at different force and mass resolutions, spanning 38 wCDM cosmologies. This large simulation suite enabled construct of a prediction scheme, or emulator, for the nonlinear matter power spectrum accurate at the percent level out to k~1 h/Mpc. This is the first cosmic emulator for the dark matter power spectrum.

[ascl:1010.031] DimReduce: Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction of Very Large Datasets with Locally Linear Embedding (LLE) and its Variants

DimReduce is a C++ package for performing nonlinear dimensionality reduction of very large datasets with Locally Linear Embedding (LLE) and its variants. DimReduce is built for speed, using the optimized linear algebra packages BLAS, LAPACK (ascl:2104.020), and ARPACK (ascl:1311.010). Because of the need for storing very large matrices (1000 by 10000, for our SDSS LLE work), DimReduce is designed to use binary FITS files as inputs and outputs. This means that using the code is a bit more cumbersome. For smaller-scale LLE, where speed of computation is not as much of an issue, the Modular Data Processing toolkit may be a better choice. It is a python toolkit with some LLE functionality, which VanderPlas contributed.

This code has been rewritten and included in scikit-learn and an improved version is included in http://mmp2.github.io/megaman/

[ascl:1010.032] Extreme Deconvolution: Density Estimation using Gaussian Mixtures in the Presence of Noisy, Heterogeneous and Incomplete Data

Extreme-deconvolution is a general algorithm to infer a d-dimensional distribution function from a set of heterogeneous, noisy observations or samples. It is fast, flexible, and treats the data's individual uncertainties properly, to get the best description possible for the underlying distribution. It performs well over the full range of density estimation, from small data sets with only tens of samples per dimension, to large data sets with hundreds of thousands of data points.

[ascl:1010.033] GALEV Evolutionary Synthesis Models

GALEV evolutionary synthesis models describe the evolution of stellar populations in general, of star clusters as well as of galaxies, both in terms of resolved stellar populations and of integrated light properties over cosmological timescales of > 13 Gyr from the onset of star formation shortly after the Big Bang until today.

For galaxies, GALEV includes a simultaneous treatment of the chemical evolution of the gas and the spectral evolution of the stellar content, allowing for a chemically consistent treatment using input physics (stellar evolutionary tracks, stellar yields and model atmospheres) for a large range of metallicities and consistently account for the increasing initial abundances of successive stellar generations.

[ascl:1010.034] iCosmo: An Interactive Cosmology Package

iCosmo is a software package to perform interactive cosmological calculations for the low redshift universe. The computation of distance measures, the matter power spectrum, and the growth factor is supported for any values of the cosmological parameters. It also performs the computation of observables for several cosmological probes such as weak gravitational lensing, baryon acoustic oscillations and supernovae. The associated errors for these observables can be derived for customised surveys, or for pre-set values corresponding to current or planned instruments. The code also allows for the calculation of cosmological forecasts with Fisher matrices which can be manipulated to combine different surveys and cosmological probes. The code is written in the IDL language and thus benefits from the convenient interactive features and scientific library available in this language. iCosmo can also be used as an engine to perform cosmological calculations in batch mode, and forms a convenient evolutive platform for the development of further cosmological modules. With its extensive documentation, it may also serve as a useful resource for teaching and for newcomers in the field of cosmology.

[ascl:1010.035] SLR: Stellar Locus Regression

Stellar Locus Regression (SLR) is a simple way to calibrate colors at the 1-2% level, and magnitudes at the sub-5% level as limited by 2MASS, without the traditional use of standard stars. With SLR, stars in any field are "standards." This is an entirely new way to calibrate photometry. SLR exploits the simple fact that most stars lie along a well defined line in color-color space called the stellar locus. Cross-match point-sources in flattened images taken through different passbands and plot up all color vs color combinations, and you will see the stellar locus with little effort. SLR calibrates colors by fitting these colors to a standard line. Cross-match with 2MASS on top of that, and SLR will deliver calibrated magnitudes as well.

[ascl:1010.036] Montage: An Astronomical Image Mosaicking Toolkit

Montage is an open source code toolkit for assembling Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) images into custom mosaics. It runs on all common Linux/Unix platforms, on desktops, clusters and computational grids, and supports all World Coordinate System (WCS) projections and common coordinate systems. Montage preserves spatial and calibration fidelity of input images, processes 40 million pixels in up to 32 minutes on 128 nodes on a Linux cluster, and provides independent engines for analyzing the geometry of images on the sky, re-projecting images, rectifying background emission to a common level, and co-adding images. It offers convenient tools for managing and manipulating large image files.

[ascl:1010.037] FastChi: A Fast Chi-squared Technique For Period Search of Irregularly Sampled Data

The Fast Chi-Squared Algorithm is a fast, powerful technique for detecting periodicity. It was developed for analyzing variable stars, but is applicable to many of the other applications where the Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) or other periodograms (such as Lomb-Scargle) are currently used. The Fast Chi-squared technique takes a data set (e.g. the brightness of a star measured at many different times during a series of observations) and finds the periodic function that has the best frequency and shape (to an arbitrary number of harmonics) to fit the data. Among its advantages are:

  • Statistical efficiency: all of the data are used, weighted by their individual error bars, giving a result with a significance calibrated in well-understood Chi-squared statistics.
  • Sensitivity to harmonic content: many conventional techniques look only at the significance (or the amplitude) of the fundamental sinusoid and discard the power of the higher harmonics.
  • Insensitivity to the sample timing: you won't find a period of 24 hours just because you take your observations at night. You do not need to window your data.
  • The frequency search is gridded more tightly than the traditional "integer number of cycles over the span of observations", eliminating power loss from peaks that fall between the grid points.
  • Computational speed: The complexity of the algorithm is O(NlogN), where N is the number of frequencies searched, due to its use of the FFT.

[ascl:1010.038] Low Resolution Spectral Templates For AGNs and Galaxies From 0.03 -- 30 microns

We present a set of low resolution empirical SED templates for AGNs and galaxies in the wavelength range from 0.03 to 30 microns based on the multi-wavelength photometric observations of the NOAO Deep-Wide Field Survey Bootes field and the spectroscopic observations of the AGN and Galaxy Evolution Survey. Our training sample is comprised of 14448 galaxies in the redshift range 0<~z<~1 and 5347 likely AGNs in the range 0<~z<~5.58. We use our templates to determine photometric redshifts for galaxies and AGNs. While they are relatively accurate for galaxies, their accuracies for AGNs are a strong function of the luminosity ratio between the AGN and galaxy components. Somewhat surprisingly, the relative luminosities of the AGN and its host are well determined even when the photometric redshift is significantly in error. We also use our templates to study the mid-IR AGN selection criteria developed by Stern et al.(2005) and Lacy et al.(2004). We find that the Stern et al.(2005) criteria suffers from significant incompleteness when there is a strong host galaxy component and at z =~ 4.5, when the broad Halpha emission line is redshifted into the [3.6] band, but that it is little contaminated by low and intermediate redshift galaxies. The Lacy et al.(2004) criterion is not affected by incompleteness at z =~ 4.5 and is somewhat less affected by strong galaxy host components, but is heavily contaminated by low redshift star forming galaxies. Finally, we use our templates to predict the color-color distribution of sources in the upcoming WISE mission and define a color criterion to select AGNs analogous to those developed for IRAC photometry. We estimate that in between 640,000 and 1,700,000 AGNs will be identified by these criteria, but will have serious completeness problems for z >~ 3.4.

[ascl:1010.039] Parameter Estimation from Time-Series Data with Correlated Errors: A Wavelet-Based Method and its Application to Transit Light Curves

We consider the problem of fitting a parametric model to time-series data that are afflicted by correlated noise. The noise is represented by a sum of two stationary Gaussian processes: one that is uncorrelated in time, and another that has a power spectral density varying as $1/f^gamma$. We present an accurate and fast [O(N)] algorithm for parameter estimation based on computing the likelihood in a wavelet basis. The method is illustrated and tested using simulated time-series photometry of exoplanetary transits, with particular attention to estimating the midtransit time. We compare our method to two other methods that have been used in the literature, the time-averaging method and the residual-permutation method. For noise processes that obey our assumptions, the algorithm presented here gives more accurate results for midtransit times and truer estimates of their uncertainties.

[ascl:1010.040] Cosmic String Simulations

Complicated cosmic string loops will fragment until they reach simple, non-intersecting ("stable") configurations. Through extensive numerical study, these attractor loop shapes are characterized including their length, velocity, kink, and cusp distributions. An initial loop containing $M$ harmonic modes will, on average, split into 3M stable loops. These stable loops are approximately described by the degenerate kinky loop, which is planar and rectangular, independently of the number of modes on the initial loop. This is confirmed by an analytic construction of a stable family of perturbed degenerate kinky loops. The average stable loop is also found to have a 40% chance of containing a cusp. This new analytic scheme explicitly solves the string constraint equations.

[ascl:1010.041] FASTLens (FAst STatistics for weak Lensing): Fast Method for Weak Lensing Statistics and Map Making

The analysis of weak lensing data requires to account for missing data such as masking out of bright stars. To date, the majority of lensing analyses uses the two point-statistics of the cosmic shear field. These can either be studied directly using the two-point correlation function, or in Fourier space, using the power spectrum. The two-point correlation function is unbiased by missing data but its direct calculation will soon become a burden with the exponential growth of astronomical data sets. The power spectrum is fast to estimate but a mask correction should be estimated. Other statistics can be used but these are strongly sensitive to missing data. The solution that is proposed by FASTLens is to properly fill-in the gaps with only NlogN operations, leading to a complete weak lensing mass map from which one can compute straight forwardly and with a very good accuracy any kind of statistics like power spectrum or bispectrum.

[ascl:1010.042] WeightMixer: Hybrid Cross-power Spectrum Estimation

This code, which requires HEALPix 2.x (ascl:1107.018), allows you to generate power spectrum estimators from WMAP 5-year maps and generate hybrid cross- and auto- power spectrum and covariance from general foreground-cleaned maps. In addition, it allows you to simulate combined maps or combinations of maps for individual detectors and do MPI spherical transforms of arrays of maps, calculate coupling matrices etc. The code includes all of LensPix (ascl:1102.025), the MPI framework used for doing spherical transforms (based on HealPix).

[ascl:1010.043] FSPS: Flexible Stellar Population Synthesis

FSPS is a flexible SPS package that allows the user to compute simple stellar populations (SSPs) for a range of IMFs and metallicities, and for a variety of assumptions regarding the morphology of the horizontal branch, the blue straggler population, the post--AGB phase, and the location in the HR diagram of the TP-AGB phase. From these SSPs the user may then generate composite stellar populations (CSPs) for a variety of star formation histories (SFHs) and dust attenuation prescriptions. Outputs include the "observed" spectra and magnitudes of the SSPs and CSPs at arbitrary redshift. In addition to these fortran routines, several IDL routines are provided that allow easy manipulation of the output. FSPS was designed with the intention that the user would make full use of the provided fortran routines. However, the full FSPS package is quite large, and requires some time for the user to become familiar with all of the options and syntax. Some users may only need SSPs for a range of metallicities and IMFs. For such users, standard SSP sets for several IMFs, evolutionary tracks, and spectral libraries are available here.

[ascl:1010.044] MAESTRO: An Adaptive Low Mach Number Hydrodynamics Algorithm for Stellar Flows

MAESTRO, a low Mach number stellar hydrodynamics code, simulates long-time, low-speed flows that would be prohibitively expensive to model using traditional compressible codes. MAESTRO is based on an equation set derived using low Mach number asymptotics; this equation set does not explicitly track acoustic waves and thus allows a significant increase in the time step. MAESTRO is suitable for two- and three-dimensional local atmospheric flows as well as three-dimensional full-star flows, and adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) has been incorporated into the code. The expansion of the base state for full-star flows using a novel mapping technique between the one-dimensional base state and the Cartesian grid is also available.

NOTE: MAESTRO is no longer being actively developed. Users should switch to MAESTROeX (ascl:1908.019) to take advantage of the latest capabilities.

[ascl:1010.045] PLUTO: A Code for Flows in Multiple Spatial Dimensions

PLUTO is a modular Godunov-type code intended mainly for astrophysical applications and high Mach number flows in multiple spatial dimensions. The code embeds different hydrodynamic modules and multiple algorithms to solve the equations describing Newtonian, relativistic, MHD, or relativistic MHD fluids in Cartesian or curvilinear coordinates. PLUTO is entirely written in the C programming language and can run on either single processor machines or large parallel clusters through the MPI library. A simple user-interface based on the Python scripting language is available to setup a physical problem in a quick and self-explanatory way. Computations may be carried on either static or adaptive (structured) grids, the latter functionality being provided through the Chombo adaptive mesh refinement library.

[ascl:1010.046] indexf: Line-strength Indices in Fully Calibrated FITS Spectra

This program measures line-strength indices in fully calibrated FITS spectra. By "fully calibrated" one should understand wavelength and relative flux-calibrated data. Note that the different types of line-strength indices that can be measured with indexf (see below) do not require absolute flux calibration. If even a relative flux-calibration is absent (or deficient), the derived indices should be transformed to an appropriate spectrophotometric system. The program can also compute index errors resulting from the propagation of random errors (e.g. photon statistics, read-out noise). This option is only available if the user provides the error spectrum as an additional input FITS file to indexf. The error spectrum must contain the unbiased standard deviation (and not the variance!) for each pixel of the data spectrum. In addition, indexf also estimates the effect of errors on radial velocity. For this purpose, the program performs Monte Carlo simulations by measuring each index using randomly drawn radial velocities (following a Gaussian distribution of a given standard deviation). If no error file is employed, the program can perform numerical simulations with synthetic error spectra, the latter generated from the original data spectra and assuming randomly generated S/N ratios.

[ascl:1010.047] ISW and Weak Lensing Likelihood Code

ISW and Weak Lensing Likelihood code is the likelihood code that calculates the likelihood of Integrated Sachs Wolfe and Weak Lensing of Cosmic Microwave Background using the WMAP 3year CMB maps with mass tracers such as 2MASS (2-Micron All Sky Survey), SDSS LRG (Sloan Digital Sky Survey Luminous Red Galaxies), SDSS QSOs (Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasars) and NVSS (NRAO VLA All Sky Survey) radio sources. The details of the analysis (*thus the likelihood code) can be understood by reading the papers ISW paper and Weak lensing paper. The code does brute force theoretical matter power spectrum and calculations with CAMB. See the paper for an introduction, descriptions, and typical results from some pre-WMAP data. The code is designed to be integrated into CosmoMC. For further information concerning the integration, see Code Modification for integration into COSMOMC.

[ascl:1010.048] OCTGRAV: Sparse Octree Gravitational N-body Code on Graphics Processing Units

Octgrav is a very fast tree-code which runs on massively parallel Graphical Processing Units (GPU) with NVIDIA CUDA architecture. The algorithms are based on parallel-scan and sort methods. The tree-construction and calculation of multipole moments is carried out on the host CPU, while the force calculation which consists of tree walks and evaluation of interaction list is carried out on the GPU. In this way, a sustained performance of about 100GFLOP/s and data transfer rates of about 50GB/s is achieved. It takes about a second to compute forces on a million particles with an opening angle of $ heta approx 0.5$.

To test the performance and feasibility, we implemented the algorithms in CUDA in the form of a gravitational tree-code which completely runs on the GPU. The tree construction and traverse algorithms are portable to many-core devices which have support for CUDA or OpenCL programming languages. The gravitational tree-code outperforms tuned CPU code during the tree-construction and shows a performance improvement of more than a factor 20 overall, resulting in a processing rate of more than 2.8 million particles per second.

The code has a convenient user interface and is freely available for use.

[ascl:1010.049] Gas-momentum-kinetic SZ cross-correlations

We present a new method for detecting the missing baryons by generating a template for the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. The template is computed from the product of a reconstructed velocity field with a galaxy field. We provide maps of such templates constructed from SDSS Data Release 7 spectroscopic data (SDSS VAGC sample) along side with their expected two point correlation functions with CMB temperature anisotropies. Codes of generating such coefficients of the two point correlation function are also released to provide users of the gas-momentum map a way to change the parameters such as cosmological parameters, reionization history, ionization parameters, etc.

[ascl:1010.050] LensPerfect: Gravitational Lens Massmap Reconstructions Yielding Exact Reproduction of All Multiple Images

LensPerfect is a new approach to the massmap reconstruction of strong gravitational lenses. Conventional methods iterate over possible lens models which reproduce the observed multiple image positions well but not exactly. LensPerfect only produces solutions which fit all of the data exactly. Magnifications and shears of the multiple images can also be perfectly constrained to match observations.

[ascl:1010.051] NEMO: A Stellar Dynamics Toolbox

NEMO is an extendible Stellar Dynamics Toolbox, following an Open-Source Software model. It has various programs to create, integrate, analyze and visualize N-body and SPH like systems, following the pipe and filter architecture. In addition there are various tools to operate on images, tables and orbits, including FITS files to export/import to/from other astronomical data reduction packages. A large growing fraction of NEMO has been contributed by a growing list of authors. The source code consist of a little over 4000 files and a little under 1,000,000 lines of code and documentation, mostly C, and some C++ and Fortran. NEMO development started in 1986 in Princeton (USA) by Barnes, Hut and Teuben. See also ZENO (ascl:1102.027) for the version that Barnes maintains.

[ascl:1010.052] EAZY: A Fast, Public Photometric Redshift Code

EAZY, Easy and Accurate Zphot from Yale, determines photometric redshifts. The program is optimized for cases where spectroscopic redshifts are not available, or only available for a biased subset of the galaxies. The code combines features from various existing codes: it can fit linear combinations of templates, it includes optional flux- and redshift-based priors, and its user interface is modeled on the popular HYPERZ (ascl:1108.010) code. The default template set, as well as the default functional forms of the priors, are not based on (usually highly biased) spectroscopic samples, but on semi-analytical models. Furthermore, template mismatch is addressed by a novel rest-frame template error function. This function gives different wavelength regions different weights, and ensures that the formal redshift uncertainties are realistic. A redshift quality parameter, Q_z, provides a robust estimate of the reliability of the photometric redshift estimate.

[ascl:1010.053] Halofitting codes for DGP and Degravitation

We perform N-body simulations of theories with infinite-volume extra dimensions, such as the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati (DGP) model and its higher-dimensional generalizations, where 4D gravity is mediated by massive gravitons. The longitudinal mode of these gravitons mediates an extra scalar force, which we model as a density-dependent modification to the Poisson equation. This enhances gravitational clustering, particularly on scales that have undergone mild nonlinear processing. While the standard non-linear fitting algorithm of Smith et al. overestimates this power enhancement on non-linear scales, we present a modified fitting formula that offers a remarkably good fit to our power spectra. Due to the uncertainty in galaxy bias, our results are consistent with precision power spectrum determinations from galaxy redshift surveys, even for graviton Compton wavelengths as small as 300 Mpc. Our model is sufficiently general that we expect it to capture the phenomenology of a wide class of related higher-dimensional gravity scenarios.

[ascl:1010.054] MagnetiCS.c: Cosmic String Loop Evolution and Magnetogenesis

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.

[ascl:1010.055] SYNOW: A Highly Parameterized Spectrum Synthesis Code for Direct Analysis of SN Spectra

SYNOW is a highly parameterized spectrum synthesis code used primarily for direct (empirical) analysis of SN spectra. The code is based on simple assumptions : spherical symmetry; homologous expansion; a sharp photosphere that emits a blackbody continuous spectrum; and line formation by resonance scattering, treated in the Sobolev approximation. Synow does not do continuum transport, it does not solve rate equations, and it does not calculate ionization ratios. Its main function is to take line multiple scattering into account so that it can be used in an empirical spirit to make line identifications and estimate the velocity at the photosphere (or pseudo-photosphere) and the velocity interval within which each ion is detected. these quantities provide constraints on the composition structure of the ejected matter.

[ascl:1010.056] PHOENIX: A General-purpose State-of-the-art Stellar and Planetary Atmosphere Code

PHOENIX is a general-purpose state-of-the-art stellar and planetary atmosphere code. It can calculate atmospheres and spectra of stars all across the HR-diagram including main sequence stars, giants, white dwarfs, stars with winds, TTauri stars, novae, supernovae, brown dwarfs and extrasolar giant planets.

[ascl:1010.057] Tiny Tim: Simulated Hubble Space Telescope PSFs

Tiny Tim generates simulated Hubble Space Telescope point spread functions (PSFs). It is written in C and distributed as source code and runs on a wide variety of UNIX and VMS systems. Tiny Tim includes mirror zonal errors, time dependent aberrations (for the pre-repair instruments), field dependent obscuration patterns (for WF/PC-1 and WFPC2), and filter passband effects. It can produce a normally sampled or subsampled PSF. Output is a FITS image file.

[ascl:1010.058] VINE: A numerical code for simulating astrophysical systems using particles

VINE is a particle based astrophysical simulation code. It uses a tree structure to efficiently solve the gravitational N-body problem and Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) to simulate gas dynamical effects. The code has been successfully used for a number of studies on galaxy interactions, galactic dynamics, star formation and planet formation and given the implemented physics, other applications are possible as well.

[ascl:1010.059] CESAM: A Free Code for Stellar Evolution Calculations

The Cesam code is a consistent set of programs and routines which perform calculations of 1D quasi-hydrostatic stellar evolution including microscopic diffusion of chemical species and diffusion of angular momentum. The solution of the quasi-static equilibrium is performed by a collocation method based on piecewise polynomials approximations projected on a B-spline basis; that allows stable and robust calculations, and the exact restitution of the solution, not only at grid points, even for the discontinuous variables. Other advantages are the monitoring by only one parameter of the accuracy and its improvement by super-convergence. An automatic mesh refinement has been designed for adjusting the localisations of grid points according to the changes of unknowns. For standard models, the evolution of the chemical composition is solved by stiffly stable schemes of orders up to four; in the convection zones mixing and evolution of chemical are simultaneous. The solution of the diffusion equation employs the Galerkin finite elements scheme; the mixing of chemicals is then performed by a strong turbulent diffusion. A precise restoration of the atmosphere is allowed for.

[ascl:1010.060] Pencil: Finite-difference Code for Compressible Hydrodynamic Flows

The Pencil code is a high-order finite-difference code for compressible hydrodynamic flows with magnetic fields. It is highly modular and can easily be adapted to different types of problems. The code runs efficiently under MPI on massively parallel shared- or distributed-memory computers, like e.g. large Beowulf clusters. The Pencil code is primarily designed to deal with weakly compressible turbulent flows. To achieve good parallelization, explicit (as opposed to compact) finite differences are used. Typical scientific targets include driven MHD turbulence in a periodic box, convection in a slab with non-periodic upper and lower boundaries, a convective star embedded in a fully nonperiodic box, accretion disc turbulence in the shearing sheet approximation, self-gravity, non-local radiation transfer, dust particle evolution with feedback on the gas, etc. A range of artificial viscosity and diffusion schemes can be invoked to deal with supersonic flows. For direct simulations regular viscosity and diffusion is being used. The code is written in well-commented Fortran90.

[ascl:1010.061] EyE: Enhance Your Extraction

In EyE (Enhance Your Extraction) an artificial neural network connected to pixels of a moving window (retina) is trained to associate these input stimuli to the corresponding response in one or several output image(s). The resulting filter can be loaded in SExtractor (ascl:1010.064) to operate complex, wildly non-linear filters on astronomical images. Typical applications of EyE include adaptive filtering, feature detection and cosmetic corrections.

[ascl:1010.062] MissFITS: Basic Maintenance and Packaging Tasks on FITS Files

MissFITS is a program that performs basic maintenance and packaging tasks on FITS files using an optimized FITS library. MissFITS can:

- add, edit, and remove FITS header keywords;
- split and join Multi-Extension-FITS (MEF) files;
- unpile and pile FITS data-cubes; and,
- create, check, and update FITS checksums, using R. Seaman’s protocol.

[ascl:1010.063] SCAMP: Automatic Astrometric and Photometric Calibration

Astrometric and photometric calibrations have remained the most tiresome step in the reduction of large imaging surveys. SCAMP has been written to address this problem. The program efficiently computes accurate astrometric and photometric solutions for any arbitrary sequence of FITS images in a completely automatic way. SCAMP is released under the GNU General Public License.

[ascl:1010.064] SExtractor: Source Extractor

This new software optimally detects, de-blends, measures and classifies sources from astronomical images: SExtractor (Source Extractor). A very reliable star/galaxy separation can be achieved on most images using a neural network trained with simulated images. Salient features of SExtractor include its ability to work on very large images, with minimal human intervention, and to deal with a wide variety of object shapes and magnitudes. It is therefore particularly suited to the analysis of large extragalactic surveys.

[ascl:1010.065] PN: Higher Post Newtonian Gravity Calculations

Motivated by experimental probes of general relativity, we adopt methods from perturbative (quantum) field theory to compute, up to certain integrals, the effective lagrangian for its n-body problem. Perturbation theory is performed about a background Minkowski spacetime to O[(v/c)^4] beyond Newtonian gravity, where v is the typical speed of these n particles in their center of energy frame. For the specific case of the 2 body problem, the major efforts underway to measure gravitational waves produced by in-spiraling compact astrophysical binaries require their gravitational interactions to be computed beyond the currently known O[(v/c)^7]. We argue that such higher order post-Newtonian calculations must be automated for these field theoretic methods to be applied successfully to achieve this goal. In view of this, we outline an algorithm that would in principle generate the relevant Feynman diagrams to an arbitrary order in v/c and take steps to develop the necessary software. The Feynman diagrams contributing to the n-body effective action at O[(v/c)^6] beyond Newton are derived.

[ascl:1010.066] SkyMaker: Astronomical Image Simulations Made Easy

SkyMaker simulates astronomical images. It accepts object lists in ASCII generated by the Stuff program (ascl:1010.067) to produce realistic astronomical fields. SkyMaker is part of the EFIGI development project.

[ascl:1010.067] Stuff: Simulating “Perfect” Astronomical Catalogues

Stuff is a program that simulates “perfect” astronomical catalogues. It generate object lists in ASCII which can read by the SkyMaker program to produce realistic astronomical fields. Stuff is part of the EFIGI development project.

[ascl:1010.068] SWarp: Resampling and Co-adding FITS Images Together

SWarp resamples and co-adds together FITS images using any arbitrary astrometric projection defined in the WCS standard. It operates on pre-reduced images and their weight-maps. Based on the astrometric and photometric calibrations derived at an earlier phase of the pipeline, SWarp re-maps ("warps") the pixels to a perfect projection system, and co-adds them in an optimum way, according to their relative weights. SWarp's astrometric engine is based on a customized version of Calabretta's WCSLib 2.6 and supports all of the projections defined in the 2000 version of the WCS proposal.

[ascl:1010.069] WeightWatcher: Code to Produce Control Maps

WeightWatcher is a program that combines weight-maps, flag-maps and polygon data in order to produce control maps which can directly be used in astronomical image-processing packages like Drizzle, SWarp or SExtractor.

[ascl:1010.070] Fisher.py: Fisher Matrix Manipulation and Confidence Contour Plotting

Fisher.py allows you to combine constraints from multiple experiments (e.g., weak lensing + supernovae) and add priors (e.g., a flat universe) simply and easily. Calculate parameter uncertainties and plot confidence ellipses. Fisher matrix expectations for several experiments are included as calculated by myself (time delays) and the Dark Energy Task Force (WL/SN/BAO/CL/CMB), or provide your own.

[ascl:1010.071] WSHAPE: Gravitational Softening and Adaptive Mass Resolution

Pairwise forces between particles in cosmological N-body simulations are generally softened to avoid hard collisions. Physically, this softening corresponds to treating the particles as diffuse clouds rather than point masses. For particles of unequal mass (and hence unequal softening length), computing the softened force involves a nontrivial double integral over the volumes of the two particles. We show that Plummer force softening is consistent with this interpretation of softening while spline softening is not. We provide closed-form expressions and numerical implementation for pairwise gravitational force laws for pairs of particles of general softening scales $epsilon_1$ and $epsilon_2$ assuming the commonly used cloud profiles: NGP, CIC, TSC, and PQS. Similarly, we generalize Plummer force law into pairs of particles of general softenings. We relate our expressions to the gaussian, Plummer and spline force softenings known from literature. Our expressions allow possible inclusions of pointlike particles such as stars or supermassive black holes.

[ascl:1010.072] Enzo: AMR Cosmology Application

Enzo is an adaptive mesh refinement (AMR), grid-based hybrid code (hydro + N-Body) which is designed to do simulations of cosmological structure formation. It uses the algorithms of Berger & Collela to improve spatial and temporal resolution in regions of large gradients, such as gravitationally collapsing objects. The Enzo simulation software is incredibly flexible, and can be used to simulate a wide range of cosmological situations with the available physics packages.

Enzo has been parallelized using the MPI message-passing library and can run on any shared or distributed memory parallel supercomputer or PC cluster. Simulations using as many as 1024 processors have been successfully carried out on the San Diego Supercomputing Center's Blue Horizon, an IBM SP.

[ascl:1010.073] partiview: Immersive 4D Interactive Visualization of Large-Scale Simulations

In dense clusters a bewildering variety of interactions between stars can be observed, ranging from simple encounters to collisions and other mass-transfer encounters. With faster and special-purpose computers like GRAPE, the amount of data per simulation is now exceeding 1TB. Visualization of such data has now become a complex 4D data-mining problem, combining space and time, and finding interesting events in these large datasets. We have recently starting using the virtual reality simulator, installed in the Hayden Planetarium in the American Museum for Natural History, to tackle some of these problem. partiview is a program that enables you to visualize and animate particle data. partiview runs on relatively simple desktops and laptops, but is mostly compatible with its big brother VirDir.

[ascl:1010.074] StarCrash: 3-d Evolution of Self-gravitating Fluid Systems

StarCrash is a parallel fortran code based on Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) techniques to calculate the 3-d evolution of self-gravitating fluid systems. The code in particularly suited to the study of stellar interactions, such as mergers of binary star systems and stellar collisions. The StarCrash code comes with several important features, including:

  • Several routines which construct the initial conditions appropriate to a wide variety of physical systems
  • An efficient parallel neighbor-finding algorithm for calculating hydrodynamic quantities
  • A parallel gravitational field solver based on FFT convolution techniques, which uses the FFTW software libraries
  • Relaxation Techniques for single stars and synchronized binaries
  • Three different artificial viscosity treatments to calculate the thermodynamic evolution of the matter
  • An optional gravitational radiation back-reaction treatment, which calculates the damping force from gravity wave losses to lowest relativistic order in a spatially accurate way

[ascl:1010.075] Radex: Fast Non-LTE Analysis of Interstellar Line Spectra

The large quantity and high quality of modern radio and infrared line observations require efficient modeling techniques to infer physical and chemical parameters such as temperature, density, and molecular abundances. Radex calculates the intensities of atomic and molecular lines produced in a uniform medium, based on statistical equilibrium calculations involving collisional and radiative processes and including radiation from background sources. Optical depth effects are treated with an escape probability method. The program makes use of molecular data files maintained in the Leiden Atomic and Molecular Database (LAMDA), which will continue to be improved and expanded. The performance of the program is compared with more approximate and with more sophisticated methods. An Appendix provides diagnostic plots to estimate physical parameters from line intensity ratios of commonly observed molecules. This program should form an important tool in analyzing observations from current and future radio and infrared telescopes.

[ascl:1010.076] Starlab: A Software Environment for Collisional Stellar Dynamics

Traditionally, a simulation of a dense stellar system required choosing an initial model, running an integrator, and analyzing the output. Almost all of the effort went into writing a clever integrator that could handle binaries, triples and encounters between various multiple systems efficiently. Recently, the scope and complexity of these simulations has increased dramatically, for three reasons: 1) the sheer size of the data sets, measured in Terabytes, make traditional 'awking and grepping' of a single output file impractical; 2) the addition of stellar evolution data brings qualitatively new challenges to the data reduction; 3) increased realism of the simulations invites realistic forms of 'SOS': Simulations of Observations of Simulations, to be compared directly with observations. We are now witnessing a shift toward the construction of archives as well as tailored forms of visualization including the use of virtual reality simulators and planetarium domes, and a coupling of both with budding efforts in constructing virtual observatories. This review describes these new trends, presenting Starlab as the first example of a full software environment for realistic large-scale simulations of dense stellar systems.

[ascl:1010.077] LAMDA: Leiden Atomic and Molecular Database

LAMDA provides users of radiative transfer codes with the basic atomic and molecular data needed for the excitation calculation. Line data of a number of astrophysically interesting species are summarized, including energy levels, statistical weights, Einstein A-coefficients and collisional rate coefficients. Available collisional data from quantum chemical calculations and experiments are in some cases extrapolated to higher energies. Currently the database contains atomic data for 3 species and molecular data for 28 different species. In addition, several isotopomers and deuterated versions are available. This database should form an important tool in analyzing observations from current and future infrared and (sub)millimetre telescopes. Databases such as these rely heavily on the efforts by the chemical physics community to provide the relevant atomic and molecular data. Further efforts in this direction are strongly encouraged so that the current extrapolations of collisional rate coefficients can be replaced by actual calculations in future releases.

RADEX (ascl:1010.075), a computer program for performing statistical equilibrium calculations, is made publicly available as part of the data base.

[ascl:1010.078] AstroMD: A Multi Dimensional Visualization and Analysis Toolkit for Astrophysics

Over the past few years, the role of visualization for scientific purpose has grown up enormously. Astronomy makes an extended use of visualization techniques to analyze data, and scientific visualization has became a fundamental part of modern researches in Astronomy. With the evolution of high performance computers, numerical simulations have assumed a great role in the scientific investigation, allowing the user to run simulation with higher and higher resolution. Data produced in these simulations are often multi-dimensional arrays with several physical quantities. These data are very hard to manage and to analyze efficiently. Consequently the data analysis and visualization tools must follow the new requirements of the research. AstroMD is a tool for data analysis and visualization of astrophysical data and can manage different physical quantities and multi-dimensional data sets. The tool uses virtual reality techniques by which the user has the impression of travelling through a computer-based multi-dimensional model.

[ascl:1010.079] Geant4: A Simulation Toolkit for the Passage of Particles through Matter

Geant4 is a toolkit for simulating the passage of particles through matter. It includes a complete range of functionality including tracking, geometry, physics models and hits. The physics processes offered cover a comprehensive range, including electromagnetic, hadronic and optical processes, a large set of long-lived particles, materials and elements, over a wide energy range starting, in some cases, from 250eV and extending in others to the TeV energy range. It has been designed and constructed to expose the physics models utilised, to handle complex geometries, and to enable its easy adaptation for optimal use in different sets of applications. The toolkit is the result of a worldwide collaboration of physicists and software engineers. It has been created exploiting software engineering and object-oriented technology and implemented in the C++ programming language. It has been used in applications in particle physics, nuclear physics, accelerator design, space engineering and medical physics.

[ascl:1010.080] GRACOS: Scalable and Load Balanced P3M Cosmological N-body Code

The GRACOS (GRAvitational COSmology) code, a parallel implementation of the particle-particle/particle-mesh (P3M) algorithm for distributed memory clusters, uses a hybrid method for both computation and domain decomposition. Long-range forces are computed using a Fourier transform gravity solver on a regular mesh; the mesh is distributed across parallel processes using a static one-dimensional slab domain decomposition. Short-range forces are computed by direct summation of close pairs; particles are distributed using a dynamic domain decomposition based on a space-filling Hilbert curve. A nearly-optimal method was devised to dynamically repartition the particle distribution so as to maintain load balance even for extremely inhomogeneous mass distributions. Tests using $800^3$ simulations on a 40-processor beowulf cluster showed good load balance and scalability up to 80 processes. There are limits on scalability imposed by communication and extreme clustering which may be removed by extending the algorithm to include adaptive mesh refinement.

[ascl:1010.081] MGGPOD: A Monte Carlo Suite for Gamma-Ray Astronomy

We have developed MGGPOD, a user-friendly suite of Monte Carlo codes built around the widely used GEANT (Version 3.21) package. The MGGPOD Monte Carlo suite and documentation are publicly available for download. MGGPOD is an ideal tool for supporting the various stages of gamma-ray astronomy missions, ranging from the design, development, and performance prediction through calibration and response generation to data reduction. In particular, MGGPOD is capable of simulating ab initio the physical processes relevant for the production of instrumental backgrounds. These include the build-up and delayed decay of radioactive isotopes as well as the prompt de-excitation of excited nuclei, both of which give rise to a plethora of instrumental gamma-ray background lines in addition to continuum backgrounds.

[ascl:1010.082] FLASH: Adaptive Mesh Hydrodynamics Code for Modeling Astrophysical Thermonuclear Flashes

The FLASH code, currently in its 4th version, is a publicly available high performance application code which has evolved into a modular, extensible software system from a collection of unconnected legacy codes. FLASH consists of inter-operable modules that can be combined to generate different applications. The FLASH architecture allows arbitrarily many alternative implementations of its components to co-exist and interchange with each other. A simple and elegant mechanism exists for customization of code functionality without the need to modify the core implementation of the source. A built-in unit test framework combined with regression tests that run nightly on multiple platforms verify the code.

[ascl:1010.083] MESA: Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics

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.

[ascl:1010.084] WhiskyMHD: Numerical Code for General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics

Whisky is a code to evolve the equations of general relativistic hydrodynamics (GRHD) and magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) in 3D Cartesian coordinates on a curved dynamical background. It was originally developed by and for members of the EU Network on Sources of Gravitational Radiation and is based on the Cactus Computational Toolkit. Whisky can also implement adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) if compiled together with Carpet.

Whisky has grown from earlier codes such as GR3D and GRAstro_Hydro, but has been rewritten to take advantage of some of the latest research performed here in the EU. The motivation behind Whisky is to compute gravitational radiation waveforms for systems that involve matter. Examples would include the merger of a binary system containing a neutron star, which are expected to be reasonably common in the universe and expected to produce substantial amounts of radiation. Other possible sources are given in the projects list.

[ascl:1010.085] Network Tools for Astronomical Data Retrieval

The first step in a science project is the acquisition and understanding of the relevant data. The tools range from simple data transfer methods to more complex browser-emulating scripts. When integrated with a defined sample or catalog, these scripts provide seamless techniques to retrieve and store data of varying types. These tools can be used to leapfrog from website to website to acquire multi-wavelength datasets. This project demonstrates the capability to use multiple data websites, in conjunction, to perform the type of calculations once reserved for on-site datasets.

[ascl:1007.001] PINTofALE: Package for Interactive Analysis of Line Emission

PINTofALE was originally developed to analyze spectroscopic data from optically-thin coronal plasmas, though much of the software is sufficiently general to be of use in a much wider range of astrophysical data analyses. It is based on a modular set of IDL tools that interact with an atomic database and with observational data. The tools are designed to allow easy identification of spectral features, measure line fluxes, and carry out detailed modeling. The basic philosophy of the package is to provide access to the innards of atomic line databases, and to have flexible tools to interactively compare with the observed data. It is motivated by the large amount of book-keeping, computation and iterative interaction that is required between the researcher and observational and theoretical data in order to derive astrophysical results. The tools link together transparently and automatically the processes of spectral "browsing", feature identification, measurement, and computation and derivation of results. Unlike standard modeling and fitting engines currently in use, PINTofALE opens up the "black box" of atomic data required for UV/X-ray analyses and allows the user full control over the data that are used in any given analysis.

[ascl:1007.002] INFALL: A code for calculating the mean initial and final density profiles around a virialized dark matter halo

Infall is a code for calculating the mean initial and final density profiles around a virialized dark matter halo. The initial profile is derived from the statistics of the initial Gaussian random field, accounting for the problem of peaks within peaks using the extended Press-Schechter model. Spherical collapse then yields the typical density and velocity profiles of the gas and dark matter that surrounds the final, virialized halo. In additional to the mean profile, ±1-σ profiles are calculated and can be used as an estimate of the scatter.

[ascl:1007.003] GEMINI: A toolkit for analytical models of two-point correlations and inhomogeneous structure formation

Gemini is a toolkit for analytical models of two-point correlations and inhomogeneous structure formation. It extends standard Press-Schechter theory to inhomogeneous situations, allowing a realistic, analytical calculation of halo correlations and bias.

[ascl:1007.004] CMBEASY: An object-oriented code for the cosmic microwave background

CMBEASY is a software package for calculating the evolution of density fluctuations in the universe. Most notably, the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature anisotropies. It features a Markov Chain Monte Carlo driver and many routines to compute likelihoods of any given model. It is based on the CMBFAST package by Uros Seljak and Matias Zaldarriaga.

[ascl:1007.005] Arcetri Spectral Code for Thin Plasmas

The Arcetri spectral code allows to evaluate the spectrum of the radiation emitted by hot and optically thin plasmas in the spectral range 1 - 2000 Angstroms. The database has been updated including atomic data and radiative and collisional rates to calculate level population and line emissivities for a number of ions of the minor elements; a critical compilation of the electron collision excitation for these elements has been performed. The present version of the program includes the CHIANTI database for the most abundant elements, the minor elements data, and Fe III atomic model, radiative and collisional data.

[ascl:1007.006] AMIGA: Adaptive Mesh Investigations of Galaxy Assembly

AMIGA is a publicly available adaptive mesh refinement code for (dissipationless) cosmological simulations. It combines an N-body code with an Eulerian grid-based solver for the full set of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) equations in order to conduct simulations of dark matter, baryons and magnetic fields in a self-consistent way in a fully cosmological setting. Our numerical scheme includes effective methods to ensure proper capturing of shocks and highly supersonic flows and a divergence-free magnetic field. The high accuracy of the code is demonstrated by a number of numerical tests.

[ascl:1004.001] GIM2D: Galaxy IMage 2D

GIM2D (Galaxy IMage 2D) is an IRAF/SPP package written to perform detailed bulge/disk decompositions of low signal-to-noise images of distant galaxies in a fully automated way. GIM2D takes an input image from HST or ground-based telescopes and outputs a galaxy-subtracted image as well as a catalog of structural parameters.

[ascl:0202.001] PopRatio: A program to calculate atomic level populations in astrophysical plasmas

PopRatio is a Fortran 90 code to calculate atomic level populations in astrophysical plasmas. The program solves the equations of statistical equilibrium considering all possible bound-bound processes: spontaneous, collisional or radiation induced (the later either directly or by fluorescence). There is no limit on the number of levels or in the number of processes that may be taken into account. The program may find a wide range of applicability in astronomical problems, such as interpreting fine-structure absorption lines or collisionally excited emission lines and also in calculating the cooling rates due to collisional excitation.

[ascl:0104.001] MLAPM: Simulating Structure Formation from Collisionless Matter

MLAPM simulates structure formation from collisionless matter. The code, written in C, is purely grid-based and uses a recursively refined Cartesian grid to solve Poisson's equation for the potential, rather than obtaining the potential from a Green's function. Refinements can have arbitrary shapes and in practice closely follow the complex morphology of the density field that evolves. The timestep shortens by a factor two with each successive refinement. It is argued that an appropriate choice of softening length is of great importance and that the softening should be at all points an appropriate multiple of the local inter-particle separation. Unlike tree and P3M codes, multigrid codes automatically satisfy this requirement.

[ascl:0104.002] CSENV: A code for the chemistry of CircumStellar ENVelopes

CSENV is a code that computes the chemical abundances for a desired set of species as a function of radius in a stationary, non-clumpy, CircumStellar ENVelope. The chemical species can be atoms, molecules, ions, radicals, molecular ions, and/or their specific quantum states. Collisional ionization or excitation can be incorporated through the proper chemical channels. The chemical species interact with one another and can are subject to photo-processes (dissociation of molecules, radicals, and molecular ions as well as ionization of all species). Cosmic ray ionization can be included. Chemical reaction rates are specified with possible activation temperatures and additional power-law dependences. Photo-absorption cross-sections vs. wavelength, with appropriate thresholds, can be specified for each species, while for H2+ a photoabsorption cross-section is provided as a function of wavelength and temperature. The photons originate from both the star and the external interstellar medium. The chemical species are shielded from the photons by circumstellar dust, by other species and by themselves (self-shielding). Shielding of continuum-absorbing species by these species (self and mutual shielding), line-absorbing species, and dust varies with radial optical depth. The envelope is spherical by default, but can be made bipolar with an opening solid-angle that varies with radius. In the non-spherical case, no provision is made for photons penetrating the envelope from the sides. The envelope is subject to a radial outflow (or wind), constant velocity by default, but the wind velocity can be made to vary with radius. The temperature of the envelope is specified (and thus not computed self-consistently).

[ascl:0101.001] MILLISEARCH: A Search for Millilensing in BATSE GRB Data

The millisearch.for code was used to generate a new search for the gravitational lens effects of a significant cosmological density of supermassive compact objects (SCOs) on gamma-ray bursts. No signal attributable to millilensing was found. We inspected the timing data of 774 BATSE-triggered GRBs for evidence of millilensing: repeated peaks similar in light-curve shape and spectra. Our null detection leads us to conclude that, in all candidate universes simulated, OmegaSCO < 0.1 is favored for 105 < MSCO/Modot < 109, while in some universes and mass ranges the density limits are as much as 10 times lower. Therefore, a cosmologically significant population of SCOs near globular cluster mass neither came out of the primordial universe, nor condensed at recombination.

[ascl:0011.001] StarFinder: A code for stellar field analysis

StarFinder is an IDL code for the deep analysis of stellar fields, designed for Adaptive Optics well-sampled images with high and low Strehl ratio. The Point Spread Function is extracted directly from the frame, to take into account the actual structure of the instrumental response and the atmospheric effects. The code is written in IDL language and organized in the form of a self-contained widget-based application, provided with a series of tools for data visualization and analysis. A description of the method and some applications to Adaptive Optics data are presented.

[ascl:0008.001] DDSCAT: The discrete dipole approximation for scattering and absorption of light by irregular particles

DDSCAT is a freely available software package which applies the "discrete dipole approximation" (DDA) to calculate scattering and absorption of electromagnetic waves by targets with arbitrary geometries and complex refractive index. The DDA approximates the target by an array of polarizable points. DDSCAT.5a requires that these polarizable points be located on a cubic lattice. DDSCAT allows accurate calculations of electromagnetic scattering from targets with "size parameters" 2 pi a/lambda < 15 provided the refractive index m is not large compared to unity (|m-1| < 1). The DDSCAT package is written in Fortran and is highly portable. The program supports calculations for a variety of target geometries (e.g., ellipsoids, regular tetrahedra, rectangular solids, finite cylinders, hexagonal prisms, etc.). Target materials may be both inhomogeneous and anisotropic. It is straightforward for the user to import arbitrary target geometries into the code, and relatively straightforward to add new target generation capability to the package. DDSCAT automatically calculates total cross sections for absorption and scattering and selected elements of the Mueller scattering intensity matrix for specified orientation of the target relative to the incident wave, and for specified scattering directions. This User Guide explains how to use DDSCAT to carry out EM scattering calculations. CPU and memory requirements are described.

[ascl:0008.002] RATRAN: Radiative Transfer and Molecular Excitation in One and Two Dimensions

RATRAN is a numerical method and computer code to calculate the radiative transfer and excitation of molecular lines. The approach is based on the Monte Carlo method, and incorporates elements from Accelerated Lambda Iteration. It combines the flexibility of the former with the speed and accuracy of the latter. Convergence problems known to plague Monte Carlo methods at large optical depth (>100) are avoided by separating local contributions to the radiation field from the overall transfer problem. The random nature of the Monte Carlo method serves to verify the independence of the solution to the angular, spatial, and frequency sampling of the radiation field. This allows the method to be used in a wide variety of astrophysical problems without specific adaptations. Moreover, the code can be applied to all atoms or molecules for which collisional rate coefficients are available and any axially symmetric source model. Continuum emission and absorption by dust is explicitly taken into account but scattering is neglected. We expect this program to be an important tool in analyzing data from present and future infrared and (sub-)millimeter telescopes.

[ascl:0003.001] GADGET-2: A Code for Cosmological Simulations of Structure Formation

The cosmological simulation code GADGET-2, a new massively parallel TreeSPH code, is capable of following a collisionless fluid with the N-body method, and an ideal gas by means of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH). The implementation of SPH manifestly conserves energy and entropy in regions free of dissipation, while allowing for fully adaptive smoothing lengths. Gravitational forces are computed with a hierarchical multipole expansion, which can optionally be applied in the form of a TreePM algorithm, where only short-range forces are computed with the `tree'-method while long-range forces are determined with Fourier techniques. Time integration is based on a quasi-symplectic scheme where long-range and short-range forces can be integrated with different timesteps. Individual and adaptive short-range timesteps may also be employed. The domain decomposition used in the parallelisation algorithm is based on a space-filling curve, resulting in high flexibility and tree force errors that do not depend on the way the domains are cut. The code is efficient in terms of memory consumption and required communication bandwidth. It has been used to compute the first cosmological N-body simulation with more than 10^10 dark matter particles, reaching a homogeneous spatial dynamic range of 10^5 per dimension in a 3D box. It has also been used to carry out very large cosmological SPH simulations that account for radiative cooling and star formation, reaching total particle numbers of more than 250 million. GADGET-2 is publicly released to the research community.

[ascl:0003.002] SAOImage DS9: A utility for displaying astronomical images in the X11 window environment

SAOImage DS9 is an astronomical imaging and data visualization application. DS9 supports FITS images and binary tables, multiple frame buffers, region manipulation, and many scale algorithms and colormaps. It provides for easy communication with external analysis tasks and is highly configurable and extensible via XPA and SAMP. DS9 is a stand-alone application. It requires no installation or support files. Versions of DS9 currently exist for Solaris, Linux, MacOSX, and Windows. All versions and platforms support a consistent set of GUI and functional capabilities. DS9 supports advanced features such as multiple frame buffers, mosaic images, tiling, blinking, geometric markers, colormap manipulation, scaling, arbitrary zoom, rotation, pan, and a variety of coordinate systems. DS9 also supports FTP and HTTP access. The GUI for DS9 is user configurable. GUI elements such as the coordinate display, panner, magnifier, horizontal and vertical graphs, button bar, and colorbar can be configured via menus or the command line. DS9 is a Tk/Tcl application which utilizes the SAOTk widget set. It also incorporates the X Public Access (XPA) mechanism to allow external processes to access and control its data, GUI functions, and algorithms.

[ascl:9912.001] SPH_1D: Hierarchical gravity/SPH treecode for simulations of interacting galaxies

We describe a fast tree algorithm for gravitational N-body simulation on SIMD parallel computers. The tree construction uses fast, parallel sorts. The sorted lists are recursively divided along their x, y and z coordinates. This data structure is a completely balanced tree (i.e., each particle is paired with exactly one other particle) and maintains good spatial locality. An implementation of this tree-building algorithm on a 16k processor Maspar MP-1 performs well and constitutes only a small fraction (approximately 15%) of the entire cycle of finding the accelerations. Each node in the tree is treated as a monopole. The tree search and the summation of accelerations also perform well. During the tree search, node data that is needed from another processor is simply fetched. Roughly 55% of the tree search time is spent in communications between processors. We apply the code to two problems of astrophysical interest. The first is a simulation of the close passage of two gravitationally, interacting, disk galaxies using 65,636 particles. We also simulate the formation of structure in an expanding, model universe using 1,048,576 particles. Our code attains speeds comparable to one head of a Cray Y-MP, so single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) type computers can be used for these simulations. The cost/performance ratio for SIMD machines like the Maspar MP-1 make them an extremely attractive alternative to either vector processors or large multiple instruction, multiple data (MIMD) type parallel computers. With further optimizations (e.g., more careful load balancing), speeds in excess of today's vector processing computers should be possible.

[ascl:9912.002] FTOOLS: A general package of software to manipulate FITS files

FTOOLS, a highly modular collection of utilities for processing and analyzing data in the FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) format, has been developed in support of the HEASARC (High Energy Astrophysics Research Archive Center) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The FTOOLS package contains many utility programs which perform modular tasks on any FITS image or table, as well as higher-level analysis programs designed specifically for data from current and past high energy astrophysics missions. The utility programs for FITS tables are especially rich and powerful, and provide functions for presentation of file contents, extraction of specific rows or columns, appending or merging tables, binning values in a column or selecting subsets of rows based on a boolean expression. Individual FTOOLS programs can easily be chained together in scripts to achieve more complex operations such as the generation and displaying of spectra or light curves. FTOOLS development began in 1991 and has produced the main set of data analysis software for the current ASCA and RXTE space missions and for other archival sets of X-ray and gamma-ray data. The FTOOLS software package is supported on most UNIX platforms and on Windows machines. The user interface is controlled by standard parameter files that are very similar to those used by IRAF. The package is self documenting through a stand alone help task called fhelp. Software is written in ANSI C and FORTRAN to provide portability across most computer systems. The data format dependencies between hardware platforms are isolated through the FITSIO library package.

[ascl:9912.003] RVSAO 2.0: Digital Redshifts and Radial Velocities

RVSAO is a set of programs to obtain redshifts and radial velocities from digital spectra. RVSAO operates in the IRAF (Tody 1986, 1993) environment. The heart of the system is xcsao, which implements the cross-correlation method, and is a direct descendant of the system built by Tonry and Davis (1979). emsao uses intelligent heuristics to search for emission lines in spectra, then fits them to obtain a redshift. sumspec shifts and sums spectra to build templates for cross-correlation. linespec builds synthetic spectra given a list of spectral lines. bcvcorr corrects velocities for the motion of the earth. We discuss in detail the parameters necessary to run xcsao and emsao properly. We discuss the reliability and error associated with xcsao derived redshifts. We develop an internal error estimator, and we show how large, stable surveys can be used to develop more accurate error estimators. We develop a new methodology for building spectral templates for galaxy redshifts. We show how to obtain correlation velocities using emission line templates. Emission line correlations are substantially more efficient than the previous standard technique, automated emission line fitting. We compare the use of RVSAO with new methods, which use Singular Value Decomposition and $chi^2$ fitting techniques.

[ascl:9911.001] DUSTY: Radiation transport in a dusty environment

DUSTY solves the problem of radiation transport in a dusty environment. The code can handle both spherical and planar geometries. The user specifies the properties of the radiation source and dusty region, and the code calculates the dust temperature distribution and the radiation field in it. The solution method is based on a self-consistent equation for the radiative energy density, including dust scattering, absorption and emission, and does not introduce any approximations. The solution is exact to within the specified numerical accuracy. DUSTY has built in optical properties for the most common types of astronomical dust and comes with a library for many other grains. It supports various analytical forms for the density distribution, and can perform a full dynamical calculation for radiatively driven winds around AGB stars. The spectral energy distribution of the source can be specified analytically as either Planckian or broken power-law. In addition, arbitrary dust optical properties, density distributions and external radiation can be entered in user supplied files. Furthermore, the wavelength grid can be modified to accommodate spectral features. A single DUSTY run can process an unlimited number of models, with each input set producing a run of optical depths, as specified. The user controls the detail level of the output, which can include both spectral and imaging properties as well as other quantities of interest.

[ascl:9911.002] IRAF: Image Reduction and Analysis Facility

IRAF includes a broad selection of programs for general image processing and graphics, plus a large number of programs for the reduction and analysis of optical and IR astronomy data. Other external or layered packages are available for applications such as data acquisition or handling data from other observatories and wavelength regimes such as the Hubble Space Telescope (optical), EUVE (extreme ultra-violet), or ROSAT and AXAF (X-ray). These external packages are distributed separately from the main IRAF distribution but can be easily installed. The IRAF system also includes a complete programming environment for scientific applications, which includes a programmable Command Language scripting facility, the IMFORT Fortran/C programming interface, and the full SPP/VOS programming environment in which the portable IRAF system and all applications are written.

[ascl:9911.003] AIPS: Astronomical Image Processing System

AIPS ("Classic") is a software package for interactive and batch calibration and editing of astronomical data, typically radio interferometric data. AIPS can be used for the calibration, construction, enhancement, display, and analysis of astronomical images made from data using Fourier synthesis methods. Design and development of the package begin in 1978. AIPS presently consists of over 1,000,000 lines of code and 400,000 lines of documentation, representing over 65 person-years of effort.

[ascl:9911.004] CHIANTI: A database for astrophysical emission line spectroscopy

CHIANTI consists of a critically evaluated set of atomic data necessary to calculate the emission line spectrum of astrophysical plasmas. The data consists of atomic energy levels, atomic radiative data such as wavelengths, weighted oscillator strengths and A values, and electron collisional excitation rates. A set of programs that use these data to calculate the spectrum in a desired wavelength range as a function of temperature and density are also provided. These programs have been written in Interactive Data Language (IDL) and descriptions of these various programs are provided on the website.

[ascl:9910.001] Cloudy: Numerical simulation of plasmas and their spectra

Cloudy is a large-scale spectral synthesis code designed to simulate fully physical conditions within an astronomical plasma and then predict the emitted spectrum. The code is freely available and is widely used in the analysis and interpretation of emission-line spectra.

[ascl:9910.002] SPECTRUM: A stellar spectral synthesis program

SPECTRUM ((C) Richard O. Gray, 1992-2008) is a stellar spectral synthesis program which runs on a number of platforms, including most flavors of UNIX and LINUX. It will also run under Windwos 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP using the Cygwin tools or the distributed Windows binaries. The code for SPECTRUM has been written in the "C" language. SPECTRUM computes the LTE synthetic spectrum given a stellar atmosphere model. SPECTRUM can use as input the fully blanketed stellar atmosphere models of Robert Kurucz including the new models of Castelli and Kurucz, but any other stellar atmosphere model which can be cast into the format of Kurucz's models can be used as well. SPECTRUM can be programmed with "command-line switches" to give a number of different outputs. In the default mode, SPECTRUM computes the stellar-disk-integrated normalized-intensity spectrum, but in addition, SPECTRUM will compute the absolute monochromatic flux from the stellar atmosphere or the specific intensity from any point on the stellar surface.

[ascl:9910.003] FASTELL: Fast calculation of a family of elliptical mass gravitational lens models

Because of their simplicity, axisymmetric mass distributions are often used to model gravitational lenses. Since galaxies are usually observed to have elliptical light distributions, mass distributions with elliptical density contours offer more general and realistic lens models. They are difficult to use, however, since previous studies have shown that the deflection angle (and magnification) in this case can only be obtained by rather expensive numerical integrations. We present a family of lens models for which the deflection can be calculated to high relative accuracy (10-5) with a greatly reduced numerical effort, for small and large ellipticity alike. This makes it easier to use these distributions for modeling individual lenses as well as for applications requiring larger computing times, such as statistical lensing studies. FASTELL is a code to calculate quickly and accurately the lensing deflection and magnification matrix for the softened power-law elliptical mass distribution (SPEMD) lens galaxy model. The SPEMD consists of a softened power-law radial distribution with elliptical isodensity contours.

[ascl:9910.004] COSMICS: Cosmological initial conditions and microwave anisotropy codes

COSMICS is a package of Fortran programs useful for computing transfer functions and microwave background anisotropy for cosmological models, and for generating gaussian random initial conditions for nonlinear structure formation simulations of such models. Four programs are provided: linger_con and linger_syn integrate the linearized equations of general relativity, matter, and radiation in conformal Newtonian and synchronous gauge, respectively; deltat integrates the photon transfer functions computed by the linger codes to produce photon anisotropy power spectra; and grafic tabulates normalized matter power spectra and produces constrained or unconstrained samples of the matter density field.

[ascl:9910.005] XSPEC: An X-ray spectral fitting package

It has been over a decade since the first paper was published containing results determined using the general X-ray spectral-fitting program XSPEC. Since then XSPEC has become the most widely used program for this purpose, being the de facto standard for the ROSAT and the de jure standard for the ASCA and XTE satellites. Probably the most important features of XSPEC are the large number of theoretical models available and the facilities for adding new models.

[ascl:9910.006] BHSKY: Visual distortions near a black hole

BHSKY (copyright 1999 by Robert J. Nemiroff) computes the visual distortion effects visible to an observer traveling around and descending near a non-rotating black hole. The codes are general relativistically accurate and incorporate concepts such as large-angle deflections, image magnifications, multiple imaging, blue-shifting, and the location of the photon sphere. Once star.dat is edited to define the position and orientation of the observer relative to the black hole, bhsky_table should be run to create a table of photon deflection angles. Next bhsky_image reads this table and recomputes the perceived positions of stars in star.num, the Yale Bright Star Catalog. Lastly, bhsky_camera plots these results. The code currently tracks only the two brightest images of each star, and hence becomes noticeably incomplete within 1.1 times the Schwarzschild radius.

[ascl:9910.007] WINGSPAN: A WINdows Gamma-ray SPectral Analysis program

WINGSPAN is a program written to analyze spectral data from the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) on NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory. Data files in the FITS (BFITS) format are suitable for input into the program. WINGSPAN can be used to view and manipulate event time histories or count spectra, and also has the capability to perform spectral deconvolution via a standard forward folding model fitting technique (Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm). Although WINGSPAN provides many functions for data manipulation, the program was designed to allow users to easily plug in their own external IDL routines. These external routines have access to all data read from the FITS files, as well as selection intervals created in the main part of WINGSPAN (background intervals and model, etc).

[ascl:9910.008] XSTAR: A program for calculating conditions and spectra of photoionized gases

XSTAR is a command-driven, interactive, computer program for calculating the physical conditions and emission spectra of photoionized gases. It may be applied in a wide variety of astrophysical contexts. Stripped to essentials, its job may be described simply: A spherical gas shell surrounding a central source of ionizing radiation absorbs some of this radiation and reradiates it in other portions of the spectrum; XSTAR computes the effects on the gas of absorbing this energy, and the spectrum of reradiated light. The user supplies the shape and strength of the incident continuum, the elemental abundances in the gas, its density or pressure, and its thickness; the code can be directed to return any of a large number of derived quantities, including (but not limited to) the ionization balance and temperature, opacity tables, and emitted line and continuum fluxes.

[ascl:9910.009] RADPACK: A RADical compression analysis PACKage for fitting to the CMB

The RADPACK package, written in IDL, contains both data and software. The data are the constraints on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) angular power spectrum from all published data as of 9/99. A unique aspect of this compilation is that the non-Gaussianity of the uncertainties has been characterized. The most important program in the package, written in the IDL language, is called chisq.pro and calculates $chi^2$, for an input power spectrum, according to the offset log-normal form of Bond, Jaffe and Knox (astro-ph/9808264). chisq.pro also outputs files that are useful for examining the residuals (the difference between the predictions of the model and the data). There is an sm macro for plotting up the residuals, and a histogram of the residuals. The histogram is actually for the 'whitenend' residuals ---a linear combination of the residuals which leaves them uncorrelated and with unit variance. The expectation is that the whitened residuals will be distributed as a Gaussian with unit variance.

[ascl:9909.001] PMCode: Particle-Mesh Code for Cosmological Simulations

Particle-Mesh (PM) codes are still very useful tools for testing predictions of cosmological models in cases when extra high resolution is not very important. We release for public use a cosmological PM N-body code. The code is very fast and simple. We provide a complete package of routines needed to set initial conditions, to run the code, and to analyze the results. The package allows you to simulate models with numerous combinations of parameters: open/flat/closed background, with or without the cosmological constant, different values of the Hubble constant, with or without hot neutrinos, tilted or non-tilted initial spectra, different amount of baryons.

[ascl:9909.002] ANGSIZ: A general and practical method for calculating cosmological distances

The calculation of distances is of fundamental importance in extragalactic astronomy and cosmology. However, no practical implementation for the general case has previously been available. We derive a second-order differential equation for the angular size distance valid not only in all homogeneous Friedmann-Lemaitre cosmological models, parametrised by $lambda_{0}$ and $Omega_{0}$, but also in inhomogeneous 'on-average' Friedmann-Lemaitre models, where the inhomogeneity is given by the (in the general case redshift-dependent) parameter $eta$. Since most other distances can be obtained trivially from the angular size distance, and since the differential equation can be efficiently solved numerically, this offers for the first time a practical method for calculating distances in a large class of cosmological models. We also briefly discuss our numerical implementation, which is publicly available.

[ascl:9909.003] ISIS: A method for optimal image subtraction

ISIS is a complete package to process CCD images using the image Optimal subtraction method (Alard & Lupton 1998, Alard 1999). The ISIS package can find the best kernel solution even in case of kernel variations as a function of position in the image. The relevant computing time is minimal in this case and is only slightly different from finding constant kernel solutions. ISIS includes as well a number of facilities to compute the light curves of variables objects from the subtracted images. The basic routines required to build the reference frame and make the image registration are also provided in the package.

[ascl:9909.004] CMBFAST: A microwave anisotropy code

CMBFAST is the most extensively used code for computing cosmic microwave background anisotropy, polarization and matter power spectra. This package contains cosmological linear perturbation theory code to compute the evolution of various cosmological matter and radiation components, both today and at high redshift. The code has been tested over a wide range of cosmological parameters.

This code is no longer supported; please investigate using CAMB (ascl:1102.026) instead.

[ascl:9909.005] BLOCK: A Bayesian block method to analyze structure in photon counting data

Bayesian Blocks is a time-domain algorithm for detecting localized structures (bursts), revealing pulse shapes, and generally characterizing intensity variations. The input is raw counting data, in any of three forms: time-tagged photon events, binned counts, or time-to-spill data. The output is the most probable segmentation of the observation into time intervals during which the photon arrival rate is perceptibly constant, i.e. has no statistically significant variations. The idea is not that the source is deemed to have this discontinuous, piecewise constant form, rather that such an approximate and generic model is often useful. The analysis is based on Bayesian statistics.

This code is obsolete and yields approximate results; see Bayesian Blocks (ascl:1209.001) instead for an algorithm guaranteeing exact global optimization.

[ascl:9906.001] SLOPES: Least-squares linear regression lines for bivariate datasets

SLOPES computes six least-squares linear regression lines for bivariate datasets of the form (x_i,y_i) with unknown population distributions. Measurement errors, censoring (nondetections) or other complications are not treated. The lines are: the ordinary least-squares regression of y on x, OLS(Y|X); the inverse regression of x on y, OLS(X_Y); the angular bisector of the OLS lines; the orthogonal regression line; the reduced major axis, and the mean-OLS line. The latter four regressions treat the variables symmetrically, while the first two regressions are asymmetrical. Uncertainties for the regression coefficients of each method are estimated via asymptotic formulae, bootstrap resampling, and bivariate normal simulation. These methods, derivation of the regression coefficient uncertainties, and discussions of their use are provided in three papers listed below. The user is encouraged to read and reference these studies.

[ascl:9906.002] EXTINCT: A computerized model of large-scale visual interstellar extinction

The program EXTINCT.FOR is a FORTRAN subroutine summarizing a three-dimensional visual Galactic extinction model, based on a number of published studies. INPUTS: Galactic latitude (degrees), Galactic longitude (degrees), and source distance (kpc). OUTPUTS (magnitudes): Extinction, extinction error, a statistical correction term, and an array containing extinction and extinction error from each subroutine. The model is useful for correcting visual magnitudes of Galactic sources (particularly in statistical models), and has been used to find Galactic extinction of extragalactic sources. The model's limited angular resolution (subroutine-dependent, but with a minimum resolution of roughly 2 degrees) is necessitated by its ability to describe three-dimensional structure.

[ascl:9905.001] CONSKY: A Sky CCD Integration Simulation

This program addresses the question of what resources are needed to produce a continuous data record of the entire sky down to a given limiting visual magnitude. Toward this end, the program simulates a small camera/telescope or group of small camera/telescopes collecting light from a large portion of the sky. From a given stellar density derived from a Bahcall - Soneira Galaxy model, the program first converts star densities at visual magnitudes between 5 and 20 to number of sky pixels needed to monitor each star simultaneously. From pixels, the program converts input CCD parameters to needed telescope attributes, needed data storage space, and the length of time needed to accumulate data of photometric quality for stars of each limiting visual magnitude over the whole sky. The program steps though photometric integrations one second at a time and includes the contribution from a bright background, read noise, dark current, and atmospheric absorption.

[ascl:9905.002] ICOSAHEDRON: A package for pixelizing the sphere

What is the best way to pixelize a sphere? This question occurs in many practical applications, for instance when making maps (of the earth or the celestial sphere) and when doing numerical integrals over the sphere. This package consists of source code and documentation for a method which involves inscribing the sphere in a regular icosahedron and then equalizing the pixel areas.

[ascl:9904.001] BSGMODEL: The Bahcall-Soneira Galaxy Model

BSGMODEL is used to construct the disk and spheroid components of the Galaxy from which the distribution of visible stars and mass in the Galaxy is calculated. The computer files accessible here are available for export use. The modifications are described in comment lines in the software. The Galaxy model software has been installed and used by different people for a large variety of purposes (see, e. g., the the review "Star Counts and Galactic Structure'', Ann. Rev. Astron. Ap. 24, 577, 1986 ).

[ascl:9903.001] LENSKY: Galactic Microlensing Probability

Given a model for the Galaxy, this program computes the microlensing rate in any direction. Program features include the ability to include the brightness of the lens and to compute the probability of lens detection at any level of lensing amplification. The program limits itself to lensing by single stars of single sources. The program is currently setup to accept input from the Galactic models of Bahcall and Soniera (1982, 1986).

There are three files needed for LENSKY, the Fortran file lensky.for and two input files: galmod.dsk (15 Megs) and galmod.sph (22 Megs). The zip file available below contains all three files. The program generates output to the file lensky.out. The program is pretty self-explanatory past that.

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