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

Deproject extends Sherpa (ascl:1107.005) to facilitate deprojection of two-dimensional annular X-ray spectra to recover the three-dimensional source properties. For typical thermal models, this includes the radial temperature and density profiles. This basic method is used for X-ray cluster analysis and is the basis for the XSPEC (ascl:9910.005) model project. The deproject module is written in Python and is straightforward to use and understand. The basic physical assumption of deproject is that the extended source emissivity is constant and optically thin within spherical shells whose radii correspond to the annuli used to extract the specta. Given this assumption, one constructs a model for each annular spectrum that is a linear volume-weighted combination of shell models.