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[ascl:2312.036] SubGen2: Subhalo population generator

The SubGen2 subhalo population generator works for both CDM and WDM of arbitrary DM particle mass. It can be used to generate a population of subhaloes according to the joint distribution of subhalo bound mass, infall mass and halo-centric distance in a halo of a given mass. SubGen2 is an extension to SubGen (ascl:2312.035), which works only for CDM subhaloes.

[ascl:2312.035] SubGen: Fast subhalo sampler

SubGen generates Monte-Carlo samples of dark matter subhaloes. It fully describes the joint distribution of subhaloes in final mass, infall mass, and radius; it can be used to predict derived distributions involving combinations of these quantities, including the universal subhalo mass function, the subhalo spatial distribution, the gravitational lensing profile, the dark matter annihilation radiation profile and boost factor. SubGen works only for CDM subhaloes; for an extension of the code to also work with WDM subhaloes, see SubGen2 (ascl:2312.036).

[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:2010.003] stsynphot: synphot for HST and JWST

An extension to synphot (ascl:1811.001), stsynphot implements synthetic photometry package for HST and JWST support. The software constructs spectra from various grids of model atmosphere spectra, parameterized spectrum models, and atlases of stellar spectrophotometry. It also simulates observations specific to HST and JWST, computes photometric calibration parameters for any supported instrument mode, and plots instrument-specific sensitivity curves and calibration target spectra.

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

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

[ascl:2401.019] StructureFunction: Bayesian estimation of the AGN structure function for Poisson data

StructureFunction determines the X-ray Structure Function of a population of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) for which two epoch X-ray observations are available and are separated by rest frame time interval. The calculation of the X-ray structure function is Bayesian. The sampling of the likelihood uses Stan (ascl:1801.003) for statistical modeling and high-performance statistical computation.

[ascl:1106.021] StringFast: Fast Code to Compute CMB Power Spectra induced by Cosmic Strings

StringFast implements a method for efficient computation of the C_l spectra induced by a network of strings, which is fast enough to be used in Markov Chain Monte Carlo analyses of future data. This code allows the user to calculate TT, EE, and BB power spectra (scalar [for TT and EE], vector, and tensor modes) for "wiggly" cosmic strings. StringFast uses the output of the public code CMBACT (ascl:1106.023). The properties of the strings are described by four parameters: Gμ—dimensionless string tension; v—rms transverse velocity (as fraction of c); α—"wiggliness"; ξ—comoving correlation length of the string network. It is written as a Fortran 90 module.

[ascl:1702.010] streamgap-pepper: Effects of peppering streams with many small impacts

streamgap-pepper computes the effect of subhalo fly-bys on cold tidal streams based on the action-angle representation of streams. A line-of-parallel-angle approach is used to calculate the perturbed distribution function of a given stream segment by undoing the effect of all impacts. This approach allows one to compute the perturbed stream density and track in any coordinate system in minutes for realizations of the subhalo distribution down to 10^5 Msun, accounting for the stream's internal dispersion and overlapping impacts. This code uses galpy (ascl:1411.008) and the streampepperdf.py galpy extension, which implements the fast calculation of the perturbed stream structure.

[ascl:1702.009] stream-stream: Stellar and dark-matter streams interactions

Stream-stream analyzes the interaction between a stellar stream and a disrupting dark-matter halo. It requires galpy (ascl:1411.008), NEMO (ascl:1010.051), and the usual common scientific Python packages.

[ascl:2101.018] stratsi: Stratified streaming instability

Stratsi calculates stratified and vertically-shearing streaming instabilities. It solves one- and two-fluid linearized equations, and, for two-fluid models, also provides the parameters and analytic vertical structure and solves for equilibrium horizontal velocity profiles. It offers utilities and various plotting options, including plots to compare one- and two-fluid results, viscous results to inviscid results, and results from two different stokes numbers or two different metallicities. stratsi requires Dedalus (ascl:1603.015) and Eigentools (ascl:2101.017).

[ascl:1708.005] STools: IDL Tools for Spectroscopic Analysis

STools contains a variety of simple tools for spectroscopy, such as reading an IRAF-formatted (multispec) echelle spectrum in FITS, measuring the wavelength of the center of a line, Gaussian convolution, deriving synthetic photometry from an input spectrum, and extracting and interpolating a MARCS model atmosphere (standard composition).

[ascl:1204.009] STOKES: Modeling Radiative Transfer and Polarization

STOKES was designed to perform three-dimensional radiative transfer simulations for astronomical applications. The code also considers the polarization properties of the radiation. The program is based on the Monte-Carlo method and treats optical and ultraviolet polarization induced by scattering off free electrons or dust grains. Emission and scattering regions can be arranged in various geometries within the model space, the computed continuum and line spectra can be evaluated at different inclinations and azimuthal viewing angles.

[ascl:1608.001] Stingray: Spectral-timing software

Stingray is a spectral-timing software package for astrophysical X-ray (and more) data. The package merges existing efforts for a (spectral-)timing package in Python and is composed of a library of time series methods (including power spectra, cross spectra, covariance spectra, and lags); scripts to load FITS data files from different missions; a simulator of light curves and event lists that includes different kinds of variability and more complicated phenomena based on the impulse response of given physical events (e.g. reverberation); and a GUI to ease the learning curve for new users.

[ascl:2305.007] Stimela: Containerized radio interferometry scripting framework

stimela provides a system-agnostic scripting framework for simulating, processing, and imaging radio interferometric data. The framework executes radio interferometry related tasks such as imaging, calibration, and data synthesis in Docker containers using Python modules. stimela offers a simple interface to packages that perform these tasks rather than doing any data processing, synthesis or analysis itself. stimela only requires Docker and Python. Moreover, because of Docker, a stimela script runs the same way (in the same iso­lated environment) regardless of the host machine’s settings, thus providing a user-friendly and modular scripting environment that gives general users easy access to novel radio interferometry calibration, imaging, and synthesis packages.

[ascl:1105.001] STILTS: Starlink Tables Infrastructure Library Tool Set

The STIL Tool Set is a set of command-line tools based on STIL, the Starlink Tables Infrastructure Library. It deals with the processing of tabular data; the package has been designed for, but is not restricted to, astronomical tables such as object catalogues. Some of the tools are generic and can work with multiple formats (including FITS, VOTable, CSV, SQL and ASCII), and others are specific to the VOTable format. In some ways, STILTS forms the command-line counterpart of the GUI table analysis tool TOPCAT. The package is robust, fully documented, and designed for efficiency, especially with very large datasets.

Facilities offered include:

- format conversion
- crossmatching
- plotting
- column calculation and rearrangement
- row selections
- data and metadata manipulation and display
- sorting
- statistical calculations
- histogram calculation
- data validation
- VO service access

A powerful and extensible expression language is used for specifying data calculations. These facilities can be put together in very flexible and efficient ways. For tasks in which the data can be streamed, the size of table STILTS can process is effectively unlimited. For other tasks, million-row tables usually do not present a problem. STILTS is written in pure Java (J2SE1.5 or later), and can be run from the command line or from Jython, or embedded into java applications. It is released under the GPL.

[ascl:1110.006] STIFF: Converting Scientific FITS Images to TIFF

STIFF converts scientific FITS images to the more popular TIFF format for illustration purposes. Most FITS readers and converters do not do a proper job at converting FITS image data to 8 bits. 8-bit images stored in JPEG, PNG or TIFF files have the intensities implicitly stored in a non-linear way. Most current FITS image viewers and converters provide the user an incorrect translation of the FITS image content by simply rescaling linearly input pixel values. A first consequence is that the people working on astronomical images usually have to apply narrow intensity cuts or square-root or logarithmic intensity transformations to actually see something on their deep-sky images. A less obvious consequence is that colors obtained by combining images processed this way are not consistent across such a large range of surface brightnesses. Though with other software the user is generally afforded a choice of nonlinear transformations to apply in order to make the faint stuff stand out more clearly in the images, with the limited selection of choices provides, colors will not be accurately rendered, and some manual tweaking will be necessary. The purpose of STIFF is to produce beautiful pictures in an automatic and consistent way.

[ascl:1810.014] STiC: Stockholm inversion code

STiC is a MPI-parallel non-LTE inversion code for observed full-Stokes observations. The code processes lines from multiple atoms in non-LTE, including partial redistribution effects of scattered photons in angle and frequency of scattered photons (PRD), and can be used with model atmospheres that have a complex depth stratification without introducing artifacts.

[submitted] stginga: Ginga for STScI

stginga customizes Ginga to aid data analysis for the data supported by STScI (e.g., HST or JWST). For instance, it provides plugins and configuration files that understand HST and JWST data products.

[ascl:1306.009] STF: Structure Finder

STF is a general structure finder designed to find halos, subhaloes, and tidal debris in N-body simulations. The current version is designed to read in "particle data" (that is SPH N-body data), but a simple modification of the I/O can have it read grid data from Grid based codes.

This code has been updated and renamed to VELOCIraptor-STF (ascl:1911.020).

[ascl:2305.019] sterile-dm: Sterile neutrino production

The sterile neutrino production code sterile-dm incorporates new elements to the calculations of the neutrino opacity at temperatures 10 MeV ≤ T ≤ 10 GeV and folds the asymmetry redistribution and opacity calculations into the sterile neutrino production computation, providing updated PSDs for the range of parameters relevant to the X-ray excess. The code requires several data files, which are included. With each run, sterile-dm creates a new output sub-directory that contains a parameter file listing the mass, mixing angle, initial lepton asymmetry and other information, a state file, which includes, among other states, the temperature and FRW coordinate time, and a set of snapshot files, one for each line in the state file.

[ascl:1805.006] StePS: Stereographically Projected Cosmological Simulations

StePS (Stereographically Projected Cosmological Simulations) compactifies the infinite spatial extent of the Universe into a finite sphere with isotropic boundary conditions to simulate the evolution of the large-scale structure. This eliminates the need for periodic boundary conditions, which are a numerical convenience unsupported by observation and which modifies the law of force on large scales in an unrealistic fashion. StePS uses stereographic projection for space compactification and naive O(N2) force calculation; this arrives at a correlation function of the same quality more quickly than standard (tree or P3M) algorithms with similar spatial and mass resolution. The N2 force calculation is easy to adapt to modern graphics cards, hence StePS can function as a high-speed prediction tool for modern large-scale surveys.

[ascl:1809.014] stepped_luneburg: Stacked-based ray tracing code to model a stepped Luneburg lens

stepped_luneburg investigates the scattered light properties of a Luneburg lens approximated as a series of concentric shells with discrete refractive indices. The optical Luneburg lens has promising applications for low-cost, continuous all-sky monitoring to obtain transit light curves of bright, nearby stars. This code implements a stack-based algorithm that tracks all reflected and refracted rays generated at each optical interface of the lens as described by Snell's law. The Luneburg lens model parameters, such as number of lens layers, the power-law that describes the refractive indices, the number of incident rays, and the initial direction of the incident wavefront can be altered to optimize lens performance. The stepped_luneburg module can be imported within the Python environment or used with scripting, and it is accompanied by two other modules, enc_int and int_map, that help the user to determine the resolving power of the lens and the strength of scattered light haloes for the purpose of quality assessment.

[ascl:2111.016] SteParSyn: Stellar atmospheric parameters using the spectral synthesis method

SteParSyn infers stellar atmospheric parameters (Teff, log g, [Fe/H], and Vbroad) of FGKM-type stars using the spectral synthesis method. The code uses the MCMC sampler emcee (ascl:1303.002) in conjunction with an spectral emulator that can interpolate spectra down to a precision < 1%. A grid of synthetic spectra that allow the user to characterize the spectra of FGKM-type stars with parameters in the range of 3500 to 7000 K in Teff, 0.0 to 5.5 dex in log g, and −2.0 to 1.0 dex in [Fe/H] is also provided.

[ascl:1907.018] StePar: Inferring stellar atmospheric parameters using the EW method

StePar computes the stellar atmospheric parameters Teff, log g, [Fe/H], and ξ of FGK-type stars using the Equivalent Width (EW) method. The code implements a grid of MARCS model atmospheres and uses the MOOG radiative transfer code (ascl:1202.009) and TAME (ascl:1503.003). StePar uses a Downhill Simplex minimization algorithm, running it twice for any given star, to compute the stellar atmospheric parameters.

[ascl:2108.014] StelNet: Stellar mass and age predictor

StelNet predicts mass and age from absolute luminosity and effective temperature for stars with close to solar metallicity. It uses a Deep Neural Network trained on stellar evolutionary tracks. The underlying model makes no assumption on the evolutionary stage and includes the pre-main sequence phase. A mix of models are trained and bootstrapped to quantify the uncertainty of the model, and data is through all trained models to provide a predictive distribution from which an expectation value and uncertainty level can be estimated.

[ascl:1901.012] stellarWakes: Dark matter subhalo searches using stellar kinematic data

stellarWakes uses stellar kinematic data to search for dark matter (DM) subhalos through their gravitational perturbations to the stellar phase-space distribution.

[ascl:1303.028] Stellarics: Inverse Compton scattering from stellar heliospheres

Cosmic ray electrons scatter on the photon fields around stars, including the sun, to create gamma rays by the inverse Compton effect. Stellarics computes the spectrum and angular distribution of this emission. The software also includes general-purpose routines for inverse Compton scattering on a given electron spectrum, for example for interstellar or astrophysical source modelling.

[ascl:1505.009] StellaR: Stellar evolution tracks and isochrones tools

stellaR accesses and manipulates publicly available stellar evolutionary tracks and isochrones from the Pisa low-mass database. It retrieves and plots the required calculations from CDS, constructs by interpolation tracks or isochrones of compositions different to the ones available in the database, constructs isochrones for age not included in the database, and extracts relevant evolutionary points from tracks or isochrones.

[ascl:2010.007] stella: Stellar flares identifier

stella creates and trains a neural network to identify stellar flares. Within stella, users can simulate flares as a training set, run a neural network, and feed in their own data to the neural network model. The software returns a probability at each data point as to whether that data point is part of a flare; the code can also characterize the flares identified.

[ascl:1108.013] STELLA: Multi-group Radiation Hydrodynamics Code

STELLA is a one-dimensional multi-group radiation hydrodynamics code. STELLA incorporates implicit hydrodynamics coupled to a multi-group non-equilibrium radiative transfer for modeling SN II-L light curves. The non-equilibrium description of radiation is crucial for this problem since the presupernova envelope may be of low mass and very dilute. STELLA implicitly treats time dependent equations of the angular moments of intensity averaged over a frequency bin. Local thermodynamic equilibrium is assumed to determine the ionization levels of materials.

[ascl:1108.018] STECKMAP: STEllar Content and Kinematics via Maximum A Posteriori likelihood

STECKMAP stands for STEllar Content and Kinematics via Maximum A Posteriori likelihood. It is a tool for interpreting galaxy spectra in terms of their stellar populations through the derivation of their star formation history, age-metallicity relation, kinematics and extinction. The observed spectrum is projected onto a temporal sequence of models of single stellar populations, so as to determine a linear combination of these models that best fits the observed spectrum. The weights of the various components of this linear combination indicate the stellar content of the population. This procedure is regularized using various penalizing functions. The principles of the method are detailed in Ocvirk et al. 2006.

[ascl:2112.006] STDPipe: Simple Transient Detection Pipeline

STDPipe is a set of Python routines for astrometry, photometry and transient detection related tasks, intended for quick and easy implementation of custom pipelines, as well as for interactive data analysis. It is implemented as a library of routines covering most common tasks and operates on standard Python objects, including NumPy arrays for images and Astropy (ascl:1304.002) tables for catalogs and object lists. The pipeline does not re-implement code already implemented in other Python packages; instead, it transparently wraps external codes, such as SExtractor (ascl:1010.064), SCAMP (ascl:1010.063), PSFEx (ascl:1301.001), HOTPANTS (ascl:1504.004), and Astrometry.Net (ascl:1208.001), that do not have their own Python interfaces. STDPipe operates on temporary files, keeping nothing after the run unless something is explicitly requested.

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

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

[ascl:2201.010] statmorph: Non-parametric morphological diagnostics of galaxy images

statmorph calculates non-parametric morphological diagnostics of galaxy images (e.g., Gini-M_{20} and CAS statistics), and fits 2D Sérsic profiles. Given a background-subtracted image and a corresponding segmentation map indicating the source(s) of interest, statmorph calculates the following morphological statistics for each source:
- Gini-M20 statistics;
- Concentration, Asymmetry and Smoothness (CAS) statistics;
- Multimode, Intensity and Deviation (MID) statistics;
- outer asymmetry and shape asymmetry;
- Sérsic index; and,
- several shape and size measurements associated to the above statistics, such as ellipticity, Petrosian radius, and half-light radius, among others.

[ascl:1704.004] STATCONT: Statistical continuum level determination method for line-rich sources

STATCONT determines the continuum emission level in line-rich spectral data by inspecting the intensity distribution of a given spectrum by using different statistical approaches. The sigma-clipping algorithm provides the most accurate continuum level determination, together with information on the uncertainty in its determination; this uncertainty is used to correct the final continuum emission level. In general, STATCONT obtains accuracies of < 10 % in the continuum determination, and < 5 % in most cases. The main products of the software are the continuum emission level, together with its uncertainty, and data cubes containing only spectral line emission, i.e. continuum-subtracted data cubes. STATCONT also includes the option to estimate the spectral index or variation of the continuum emission with frequency.

[ascl:1805.010] StarSmasher: Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics code for smashing stars and planets

Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is a Lagrangian particle method that approximates a continuous fluid as discrete nodes, each carrying various parameters such as mass, position, velocity, pressure, and temperature. In an SPH simulation the resolution scales with the particle density; StarSmasher is able to handle both equal-mass and equal number-density particle models. StarSmasher solves for hydro forces by calculating the pressure for each particle as a function of the particle's properties - density, internal energy, and internal properties (e.g. temperature and mean molecular weight). The code implements variational equations of motion and libraries to calculate the gravitational forces between particles using direct summation on NVIDIA graphics cards. Using a direct summation instead of a tree-based algorithm for gravity increases the accuracy of the gravity calculations at the cost of speed. The code uses a cubic spline for the smoothing kernel and an artificial viscosity prescription coupled with a Balsara Switch to prevent unphysical interparticle penetration. The code also implements an artificial relaxation force to the equations of motion to add a drag term to the calculated accelerations during relaxation integrations. Initially called StarCrash, StarSmasher was developed originally by Rasio.

[ascl:1703.005] starsense_algorithms: Performance evaluation of various star sensors

The Matlab starsense_algorithms package evaluates the performance of various star sensors through the implementation of centroiding, geometric voting and QUEST algorithms. The physical parameters of a star sensor are parametrized and by changing these parameters, performance estimators such as sky coverage, memory requirement, and timing requirements can be estimated for the selected star sensor.

[ascl:2106.022] STaRS: Sejong Radiative Transfer through Raman and Rayleigh Scattering with atomic hydrogen

The 3D grid-based Monte Carlo code STaRS (Sejong Radiative Transfer through Raman and Rayleigh Scattering with atomic hydrogen) traces radiative transfer through Raman and Rayleigh scattering. This can be used to investigate line formation of Raman-scattered features in a thick neutral region illuminated by a strong far-UV emission source. Favorable conditions for Raman scattering with atomic hydrogen are easily met in symbiotic stars, young planetary nebulae, and active galactic nuclei.

[ascl:1107.008] STARS: A Stellar Evolution Code

We have developed a detailed stellar evolution code capable of following the simultaneous evolution of both stars in a binary system, together with their orbital properties. To demonstrate the capabilities of the code we investigate potential progenitors for the Type IIb supernova 1993J, which is believed to have been an interacting binary system prior to its primary exploding. We use our detailed binary stellar evolution code to model this system to determine the possible range of primary and secondary masses that could have produced the observed characteristics of this system, with particular reference to the secondary. Using the luminosities and temperatures for both stars (as determined by Maund et al. 2004) and the remaining mass of the hydrogen envelope of the primary at the time of explosion, we find that if mass transfer is 100 per cent efficient the observations can be reproduced by a system consisting of a 15 solar mass primary and a 14 solar mass secondary in an orbit with an initial period of 2100 days. With a mass transfer efficiency of 50 per cent, a more massive system consisting of a 17 solar mass primary and a 16 solar mass secondary in an initial orbit of 2360 days is needed. We also investigate some of the uncertainties in the evolution, including the effects of tidal interaction, convective overshooting and thermohaline mixing.

[ascl:1810.005] STARRY: Analytic computation of occultation light curves

STARRY computes light curves for various applications in astronomy: transits and secondary eclipses of exoplanets, light curves of eclipsing binaries, rotational phase curves of exoplanets, light curves of planet-planet and planet-moon occultations, and more. By modeling celestial body surface maps as sums of spherical harmonics, STARRY does all this analytically and is therefore fast, stable, and differentiable. Coded in C++ but wrapped in Python, STARRY is easy to install and use.

[ascl:2203.006] starry_process: Interpretable Gaussian processes for stellar light curves

starry_process implements an interpretable Gaussian process (GP) for modeling stellar light curves. The code's hyperparameters are physically interpretable, and include the radius of the spots, the mean and variance of the latitude distribution, the spot contrast, and the number of spots, among others. The rotational period of the star, the limb darkening parameters, and the inclination (or marginalize over the inclination if it is not known) can also be specified.

[ascl:1609.002] StarPy: Quenched star formation history parameters of a galaxy using MCMC

StarPy derives the quenching star formation history (SFH) of a single galaxy through the Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo method code emcee (ascl:1303.002). The sample function implements the emcee EnsembleSampler function for the galaxy colors input. Burn-in is run and calculated for the length specified before the sampler is reset and then run for the length of steps specified. StarPy provides the ability to use the look-up tables provided or creating your own.

[ascl:1406.020] STARMAN: Stellar photometry and image/table handling

STARMAN is a stellar photometry package designed for the reduction of data from imaging systems. Its main components are crowded-field photometry programs, aperture photometry programs, a star finding program, and a CCD reduction program.

Image and table handling are served by a large number of programs which have a general use in photometry and other types of work. The package is a coherent whole, for use in the entire process of stellar photometry from raw images to the final standard-system magnitudes and their plotting as color-magnitude and color-color diagrams. It was distributed as part of the Starlink software collection (ascl:1110.012).

[ascl:1110.012] Starlink: Multi-purpose Astronomy Software

Starlink has many applications within it to meet a variety of needs; it includes:

  • a general astronomical image viewer;
  • data reduction tools, including programs for reducing CCD-like data;
  • general-purpose data-analysis and visualisation tools;
  • image processing, data visualisation, and manipulating NDF components;
  • a flexible and powerful library for handling World Coordinate Systems (partly based on the SLALIB library);
  • a library of routines intended to make accurate and reliable positional-astronomy applications easier to write; and
  • and a Hierarchical Data System that is portable and flexible for storing and retrieving data.

[ascl:1411.022] Starlink Figaro: Starlink version of the Figaro data reduction software package

Starlink Figaro is an independently-maintained fork of Figaro (ascl:1203.013) that runs in the Starlink software environment (ascl:1110.012). It is a general-purpose data reduction package targeted mainly at optical/IR spectroscopy. It uses the NDF data format and the ADAM libraries for parameters and messaging.

[ascl:1108.006] STARLIGHT: Spectral Synthesis Code

The study of stellar populations in galaxies is entering a new era with the availability of large and high quality databases of both observed galactic spectra and state-of-the-art evolutionary synthesis models. The power of spectral synthesis can be investigated as a mean to estimate physical properties of galaxies. Spectral synthesis is nothing more than the decomposition of an observed spectrum in terms of a superposition of a base of simple stellar populations of various ages and metallicities, producing astrophysically interesting output such as the star-formation and chemical enrichment histories of a galaxy, its extinction and velocity dispersion. This is what the STARLIGHT spectral synthesis code does.

[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:1505.007] Starfish: Robust spectroscopic inference tools

Starfish is a set of tools used for spectroscopic inference. It robustly determines stellar parameters using high resolution spectral models and uses Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to explore the full posterior probability distribution of the stellar parameters. Additional potential applications include other types of spectra, such as unresolved stellar clusters or supernovae spectra.

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

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

[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.

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