Category Archives: news

Software events at AAS 231, National Harbor

The Big List o’ Software Stuff for the January AAS meeting is here; it appears software is taking over the world! if I missed anything, please let me know in the comments below. Thank you!

SUNDAY, 7 JANUARY 2018
Workshops
Introduction to Software Carpentry (Day 1), 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM; RiverView Ballroom 2
Hands-on Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling of Cosmic Populations, 9:30 AM – 4:30 PM; Potomac Ballroom 1
Using Python to Search NASA’s Astrophysics Archives, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM; Potomac Ballroom 2

MONDAY, 8 JANUARY 2018
Workshops
Introduction to Software Carpentry (Day 2), 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM; RiverView Ballroom 2
Using Python and Astropy for Astronomical Data Analysis, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM; RiverView Ballroom B
A Data Science Foundation & Roadmap for Astronomy Instructors, 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM; Potomac Ballroom 1

TUESDAY, 9 JANUARY 2018
Splinter meeting: Better Data Visualization and Exploration with GLUE, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM; National Harbor 8 (Note corrected time!)

Poster presentations

Session 150. Computation, Data Handling, Image Analysis Poster Session (39 posters!)

Also:
157.02. Evolving R Coronae Borealis Stars with MESA
157.07. Modeling Protoplanetary Disks to Characterize the Evolution of their Structure
157.15. Case Study of Data Mining in Observational Astronomy: The Search for New OB Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
144.12. The evolution of a dead zone in a circumplanetary disk
144.17. Modeling a Large Heterogeneous Set of CIRS Spectra of Titan: The ν4 band of 12C2HD
111.02. Dynamical Studies of N-Body Gravity and Tidal Dissipation in the TRAPPIST-1 Star System
111.03. Phase Curve Analysis of Super-Earth 55 Cancri e
111.04. Statistical Analysis of Hubble/WFC3 Transit Spectroscopy of Extrasolar Planets
111.08. Theory and Simulation of Exoplanetary Atmospheric Haze: Giant Spectral Line Broadening
102.02. The Pan-STARRS pipeline and data products
102.03. Precision Photometry and Astrometry from Pan-STARRS
110.01. Resolving the Circumgalactic Medium in the NEPHTHYS Simulations
115.09. Hydrodynamic Modeling of the Deep Impact Mission into Comet Tempel 1
151.04. A Transdimensional Approach to Modeling the Cosmic X-ray Background
151.05. The VLITE Post-Processing Pipeline
151.07. OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission Image Analysis
147.03. Impact of Fragtal Grains on Protoplanetary Disk Evolution
147.05. Determining Disk Parameters for the Classical Be Star 59 Cyg
147.06. Modeling Protoplanetary Disks
147.09. Characterizing Protoplanetary Disks in a Young Binary in Orion
147.14. Hydrodynamic Simulations of Protoplanetary Disks with GIZMO
153.06. A Search for Cosmic String Loops Using GADGET-2 Cosmological N-Body Simulator
148.04. 3D hydrodynamic simulations of tidal disruption of terrestrial planets around white dwarfs
148.08. BARTTest: Community-Standard Atmospheric Radiative-Transfer and Retrieval Tests
148.13. Modeled 3-D Biosignatures from the Stratospheres of Proxima Centauri b and M-dwarf Planets
148.14. The Exoplanet Characterization ToolKit (ExoCTK)
148.29. Every Cloud has a Silver Lining: Synthesizing Spectra for Exoplanets with Inhomogeneous Aerosol Coverage
149.22. HERA, Methods of Computational Optimization in search for Epoch of Reionization
149.31. A Phenomenological Model of Star Formation Efficiency in Dark Matter Halos
136.02. Simulations of star-forming molecular clouds: observational predictions
158.10. Simulations of Tidally Driven Formation of Binary Planet Systems
158.11. Simulations of Magnetic Flux Emergence in Cool, Low-Mass Stars: Toward Linking Dynamo Action with Starspots
158.16. The Ultracool Typing Kit – An Open-Source, Qualitative Spectral Typing GUI for L Dwarfs
146.01. Binary Model for the Heartbeat Star System KIC 4142768
145.05. Modeling and Analysis of CTIO 1.5m White Dwarf Spectra

Oral presentations

111.02. Dynamical Studies of N-Body Gravity and Tidal Dissipation in the TRAPPIST-1 Star System, 10:10 AM – 10:20 AM, National Harbor 11
111.03. Phase Curve Analysis of Super-Earth 55 Cancri e, 10:20 AM – 10:30 AM, National Harbor 11
111.04. Statistical Analysis of Hubble/WFC3 Transit Spectroscopy of Extrasolar Planets, 10:30 AM – 10:40 AM, National Harbor 11
111.08. Theory and Simulation of Exoplanetary Atmospheric Haze: Giant Spectral Line Broadening, 11:20 AM – 11:30 AM, National Harbor 11
102.02. The Pan-STARRS pipeline and data products, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM, Potomac C
102.03. Precision Photometry and Astrometry from Pan-STARRS, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM, Potomac C
110.01. Resolving the Circumgalactic Medium in the NEPHTHYS Simulations, 10:00 AM – 10:10 AM, National Harbor 10
115.06. The Deflector Selector: A Machine Learning Framework for Prioritizing Hazardous Object Deflection Technology Development, 10:50 AM – 11:00 AM, Potomac 1-2
115.09. Hydrodynamic Modeling of the Deep Impact Mission into Comet Tempel 1, 1:20 AM – 11:30 AM, Potomac 1-2
116.01. SVD/MCMC Data Analysis Pipeline for Global Redshifted 21-cm Spectrum Observations of the Cosmic Dawn and Dark Ages, 12:00 PM – 3:30 PM; Woodrow Wilson BCD
128.04. Dynamics as a ‘Red Flag’ in Exoplanetary Science, 2:40 PM – 2:50 PM, National Harbor 11
132.07. Time-Dependent Electron Acceleration in Pulsar Wind Termination Shocks: Application the 2011 April Crab Nebula Gamma-ray Flare, 3:20 PM – 3:30 PM, Potomac 3-4

WEDNESDAY, 10 JANUARY 2018
Special Session: Applied Statistical Methods in Astronomy: Gaussian Processes and Machine Learning
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM; National Harbor 2

Poster presentations
Session 239: Applied Statistical Methods in Astronomy: Gaussian Processes and Machine Learning Poster Session

Also:
257.09. Exploring the Internal Dynamics of Globular Clusters
257.11. GalMod: the last frontier of Galaxy population synthesis models
257.22. TYCHO: Simulating Exoplanets Within Stellar Clusters
244.09. The COBAIN (COntact Binary Atmospheres with INterpolation) Code for Radiative Transfer
244.22. Modeling the binary circumstellar medium of Type IIb/L/n supernova progenitors
244.23. Photometric Analysis and Modeling of Five Mass-Transferring Binary Systems
244.26. A Global Three-Dimensional Radiation Hydrodynamic Simulation of a Self-Gravitating Accretion Disk
238.05. The Chandra Source Catalog 2.0: Data Processing Pipelines
246.03. An accessible echelle pipeline and its application to a binary star
246.04. Building Better Planet Populations for EXOSIMS
246.16. Improvements to the Root Finding Algorithm in VBBinaryLensing
258.16. Epoch of Reionization : An Investigation of the Semi-Analytic 21CMMC Code
252.12. Using numerical simulations to study the ICM metallicity fields in clusters and groups
255.01. SkyPlotter: Displaying Source Candidates Near High-Energy Neutrino Events
255.02. A new relativistic model for tidal stream evolution during tidal disruption events
255.05. Modeling Ponderomotive Squeezed Light in Gravitational-Wave Laser Interferometers
255.17. Data Analysis Techniques for LIGO Detector Characterization
243.11. Applying a physical continuum model to describe the broadband X-ray spectra of accreting pulsars at high luminosity
237.03. New Algorithm Identifies Tidal Streams Oriented Along our Line-of-Sight

Oral presentations
Session 213: Computation, Data Science, and Image Analysis 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM; National Harbor 4 (7 presentations)

Also:
211.07. Bayesian Analysis of Hot Jupiter Radius Anomalies Points to Ohmic Dissipation, 11:10 AM – 11:20 AM, National Harbor 11
210.06. Figuring Out Gas in Galaxies In Enzo (FOGGIE): Resolving the Inner Circumgalactic Medium, 11:10 AM – 11:20 AM, National Harbor 10
229.03. Forward modelling techniques for spectra retrieval of circumstellar debris disks, 2:30 PM – 2:40 PM, Potomac 5-6
226.03. Cosmological Simulations with Molecular Astrochemistry: Water in the Early Universe, 2:30 PM – 2:40 PM, National Harbor 3
228.05. pyLIMA : The first open source microlensing modeling software, 2:50 PM – 3:00 PM, National Harbor 11

THURSDAY, 11 JANUARY 2018
Special Session: Astronomy Software Publishing: Community Roles and Services, 10:00 am – 11:30 am, National Harbor 2
Plenary Talk: Astro Data Science: The Next Generation, 11:40 AM – 12:30 PM; Potomac Ballroom AB

Poster presentations
350.01. Looking for Dust-Scattering Light Echoes
350.03. Studying Dust Scattering Halos with Galactic X-ray Binaries
350.05. Markov Chain Models for Stochastic Behavior in Resonance Overlap Regions
340.13. Simulating Supernovae Driven Outflows in Dwarf Galaxies
355.27. Stellar Atmospheric Modelling for the ACCESS Program
351.02. Calculating the n-point correlation function with general and efficient python code
348.12. A Comparison of Mixing in Stellar Evolution Codes Tycho and Geneva
362.08. What Time is Your Sunset? Accounting for Refraction in Sunrise/set Prediction Models
362.09. SpecTracer: A Python-Based Interactive Solution for Echelle Spectra Reduction
362.11. Generative Models in Deep Learning: Constraints for Galaxy Evolution
362.16. Statistical tools for analysis and modeling of cosmic populations and astronomical time series: CUDAHM and TSE
338.04. Simulating nanostorm heating in coronal loops using hydrodynamics and non-thermal particle evolution
338.06. Modeling Solar Atmospheric Phenomena with AtomDB and PyAtomDB

Oral presentations
334.01. Modeling the photo-polarimetric characteristics of brown dwarfs, 2:00 PM – 2:10 PM, Maryland 1-2
334.04. 3D Realistic Radiative Hydrodynamic Modeling of a Moderate-Mass Star: Effects of Rotation, 2:40 PM – 2:50 PM, Maryland 1-2

FRIDAY, 12 JANUARY 2018
Workshop: Hack Together Day, 10:00 am ‐ 7:00 pm, National Harbor 13 (Info and registration)

Special Session: Statistical, Mathematical and Computational Methods for Astronomy (ASTRO): SAMSI 2016-17, 10:00 am – 11:30 am, Grapevine 2

Poster presentations
434.08. Modeling the Effects of Asynchronous Rotation on Secondary Eclipse Timings in HW VIr Binaries
436.05. Real-time Automatic Search for Multi-wavelength Counterparts of DWF Transient
436.16. CosmoQuest Transient Tracker: Opensource Photometry & Astrometry software
437.04. Impact of Ice on Evolution of Protoplanetary Disks and Formation of Planetary Systems
438.02. Tests of Catastrophic Outlier Prediction in Empirical Photometric Redshift Estimation with Redshift Probability Distributions
438.04. Confronting Alternative Cosmological Models with the Highest-Redshift Type Ia Supernovae
439.09. TESS Data Processing and Quick-look Pipeline
439.10. PyKE3: data analysis tools for NASA’s Kepler, K2, and TESS missions
439.18. Open-source Software for Exoplanet Atmospheric Modeling
439.22. Gaussian Process Noise Modeling with RadVel: a Case Study of HD 3167
439.23. Developing Tighter Constraints on Exoplanet Biosignatures by Modeling Atmospheric Haze
440.12. The Effects of Accretion Disk Thickness on the Black Hole Reflection Spectrum
441.03. Large Scale Structure in CHILES using DisPerSE
444.13. Teaching Astronomy and Computation with Gaia: A New Curriculum for an Extra-curricular High School Program
447.12. The Data Calibration Pipeline for JWST/NIRSpec
448.02. Kinematics of Globular Cluster: new Perspectives of Energy Equipartition from N-body Simulations
448.05. Improved Membership Probability for Moving Groups: Bayesian and Machine Learning Approaches
449.10. Employing Machine-Learning Methods to Study Young Stellar Objects
453.09. PINT, A Modern Software Package for Pulsar Timing
428.03. Identifying Likely Disk-hosting M dwarfs with Disk Detective
426.07. Observing Galaxy Mergers in Simulations
426.08. A new 3-D View of Ionized Gas Conditions in Galaxies
424.01. Constraining Population Synthesis Models of Compact Binary Mergers using Supernova Observations

Oral presentations
405.04. Radiation Transport in Dynamic Spacetimes, 10:40 AM – 10:50 AM, Maryland C
412.02.D Illuminating the star clusters and satellite galaxies with multi-scale baryonic simulations, 10:10 AM – 10:30 AM, National Harbor 4
406.01. Phase-space Analysis in the Group and Cluster Environment: Introduction and Application, 10:00 AM – 10:10 AM, Maryland D
406.05. Gas Dynamics in the Fornax Cluster: Viscosity, turbulence, and sloshing, 11:00 AM – 11:10 AM, Maryland D
409.04D. A Modern Picture of Barred Galaxy Dynamics, 10:40 AM – 11:00 AM, National Harbor 10
408.03D. Multidimensional pair-instability supernova simulations and their multi-messenger signals, 10:20 AM – 10:40 AM, National Harbor 3

Also of likely interest is the oral presentation on “Big Data” Teen Astronomy Cafes at NOAO that will take place on Wednesday, 10 January from 10:10 AM – 10:20 AM in Maryland 1-2.

 

November additions to the ASCL

Twenty-three codes were added in November 2017:

BayesVP: Full Bayesian Voigt profile fitting
Bifrost: Stream processing framework for high-throughput applications
clustep: Initial conditions for galaxy cluster halo simulations
correlcalc: Two-point correlation function from redshift surveys
FATS: Feature Analysis for Time Series

FTbg: Background removal using Fourier Transform
galkin: Milky Way rotation curve data handler
galstep: Initial conditions for spiral galaxy simulations
galstreams: Milky Way streams footprint library and toolkit
Gammapy: Python toolbox for gamma-ray astronomy

HBT: Hierarchical Bound-Tracing
HBT+: Subhalo finder and merger tree builder
HO-CHUNK: Radiation Transfer code
inhomog: Raychaudhuri integration
LExTeS: Link Extraction and Testing Suite

Lightning: SED Fitting Package
MARXS: Multi-Architecture Raytrace Xray mission Simulator
megaman: Manifold Learning for Millions of Points
rac-2d: Thermo-chemical for modeling water vapor formation in protoplanetary disks
RGW: Affine-invariant Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling

SpcAudace: Spectroscopic processing and analysis package of Audela software
SPIDERMAN: Fast code to simulate secondary transits and phase curves
Thindisk: Protoplanetary disk toy model

October additions to the ASCL

Twenty-five codes were added in October 2017:

ATLAS9: Model atmosphere program with opacity distribution functions
Binary: Accretion disk evolution
CppTransport: Two- and three-point function transport framework for inflationary cosmology
EXOFASTv2: Generalized publication-quality exoplanet modeling code
FITSFH: Star Formation Histories

FLaapLUC: Fermi-LAT automatic aperture photometry light curve
FLAG: Exact Fourier-Laguerre transform on the ball
FSFE: Fake Spectra Flux Extractor
galario: Gpu Accelerated Library for Analyzing Radio Interferometer Observations
GASOLINE: Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code

GBART: Determination of the orbital elements of spectroscopic binaries
GMCALab: Generalized Morphological Component Analysis
LGMCA: Local-Generalized Morphological Component Analysis
LIMEPY: Lowered Isothermal Model Explorer in PYthon
MOSFiT: Modular Open-Source Fitter for Transients

mTransport: Two-point-correlation function calculator
OSIRIS Toolbox: OH-Suppressing InfraRed Imaging Spectrograph pipeline
pred_loggs: Predicting individual galaxy G/S probability distributions
PSPLINE: Princeton Spline and Hermite cubic interpolation routines
PyTransport: Calculate inflationary correlation functions

Ramses-GPU: Second order MUSCL-Handcock finite volume fluid solver
rfpipe: Radio interferometric transient search pipeline
SkyNet: Modular nuclear reaction network library
SPIPS: Spectro-Photo-Interferometry of Pulsating Stars
vysmaw: Fast visibility stream muncher

September additions to the ASCL

Ten codes were added to the ASCL in September 2017:

bmcmc: MCMC package for Bayesian data analysis
celerite: Scalable 1D Gaussian Processes in C++, Python, and Julia
DanIDL: IDL solutions for science and astronomy
DCMDN: Deep Convolutional Mixture Density Network
DOOp: DAOSPEC Output Optimizer pipeline

MagIC: Fluid dynamics in a spherical shell simulator
MeshLab: 3D triangular meshes processing and editing
MSSC: Multi-Source Self-Calibration
PHANTOM: Smoothed particle hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics code
SPHYNX: SPH hydrocode for subsonic hydrodynamical instabilities and strong shocks

July and August additions to the ASCL

Seven codes were added to the ASCL in July 2017:

CCFpams: Atmospheric stellar parameters from cross-correlation functions
Gala: Galactic astronomy and gravitational dynamics
HRM: HII Region Models
pyaneti: Multi-planet radial velocity and transit fitting
PyMOC: Multi-Order Coverage map module for Python

SASRST: Semi-Analytic Solutions for 1-D Radiative Shock Tubes
swot: Super W Of Theta

And thirty codes were added to the ASCL in August 2017:

4DAO: DAOSPEC interface
ALCHEMIC: Advanced time-dependent chemical kinetics
ANA: Astrophysical Neutrino Anisotropy
Astroquery: Access to online data resources
ATOOLS: A command line interface to the AST library

BAGEMASS: Bayesian age and mass estimates for transiting planet host stars
CINE: Comet INfrared Excitation
ComEst: Completeness Estimator
CRISPRED: CRISP imaging spectropolarimeter data reduction pipeline
CUTEX: CUrvature Thresholding Extractor

DISORT: DIScrete Ordinate Radiative Transfer
empiriciSN: Supernova parameter generator
ExoSOFT: Exoplanet Simple Orbit Fitting Toolbox
extinction-distances: Estimating distances to dark clouds
FIEStool: Automated data reduction for FIber-fed Echelle Spectrograph (FIES)

GAMBIT: Global And Modular BSM Inference Tool
GANDALF: Gas AND Absorption Line Fitting
GMM: Gaussian Mixture Modeling
iSEDfit: Bayesian spectral energy distribution modeling of galaxies
KERTAP: Strong lensing effects of Kerr black holes

LCC: Light Curves Classifier
Naima: Derivation of non-thermal particle distributions through MCMC spectral fitting
PACSman: IDL Suite for Herschel/PACS spectrometer data
PBMC: Pre-conditioned Backward Monte Carlo code for radiative transport in planetary atmospheres
pyLCSIM: X-ray lightcurves simulator

RM-CLEAN: RM spectra cleaner
SINFONI Pipeline: Data reduction pipeline for the Very Large Telescope SINFONI spectrograph
STools: IDL Tools for Spectroscopic Analysis
TWO-POP-PY: Two-population dust evolution model
XDGMM: eXtreme Deconvolution Gaussian Mixture Modeling

In conclusion 2 …

As promised in a previous post, here are a few slides from the second block of EWASS 2017 software presentations.

Reproducibility in Era of Data-Driven Science, Kai Polsterer (slides: PDF)

Conclusion: publications should be open access. Data should include all raw, test, training, and reference data in addition to detailed results. Software should be put into repositories and registries, and parameters, configuration, and environment needed to run the software should be saved as much as possible.

 

Should short codes used for astronomy research be made public?, Robert Nemiroff (slides: PDF)

Summary and key points. Short codes can be vitally important, yet we never see them, making science less falsifiable. Let's reverse this. Submit your important short codes with your papers, like Figures, OR to the ASCL (at ascl.net). Science, on the whole, will be stronger.

 

Giving credit where credit is due: the role of ADS in discovering and citing software in scholarly publications, Sergi Blanco-Cuaresma (slides: PDF)

SAO/NASA ADS. Identification: What software version? Preservation: Is that version still available? Attribution: Is the right set of authors receiving the credit?

 

Fifteen years of WISE technology software development and operations, Gijs Verdoes Kleijn (slides: PDF)

The future: (Big) Data Science and Education. University of Groningen astronomy student admissions tripled since 2010. Strategy: grow a new generation of data scientists

 

CDS reference services supporting astronomy research, Mark Allen (slides: PDF)

Challenges and Opportunities. Multi-wavelength, multi-messenger and time-domain astrophysics. Changing modes of publication -- data associated with publications. Responding to the change in scale - Big Data. New technologies - not too soon, not too late. Bringing the code to the data. Continued adaptation to meet community needs.

In conclusion 1…

Here are a few slides from presentations mentioned in a previous blog post; slides from more of the talks at EWASS will be covered in another post.

Software development best practices from Astropy, Thomas Robitaille (slides: PDF)

All contributions are made in GitHub repositor(ies). All contributions are reviewed via pull requests. Test suite run using pytest. Docs written in Sphinx, hosted on ReadTheDocs. Continuous integration on Travis AppVeyor, Circle CI.

A Computer Science Perspective on the Astronomy Research Software Process by John Wenskovitch (slides: PDF)

Summary: 1. Acknowledgement of strengths. 2. Version control. a. Use it. b. Commit often. 3. Frequent communication. 4. Manage feature requests. 5. Collaborate with an expert.

TARDIS: A radiative transfer code, an open source community, and an interdisciplinary collaboration by Wolfgang Kerzendorf (slides: PDF)

Developing simulation codes. Science discovery needs to be the key driver (everything else is secondary). Only write code that doesn't exist anywhere else. Many of the software engineering techniques are geared towards team development -- not always applicable.

Research software best practices: Transparency, credit, and citation by yours truly (slides: PDF, PPTX)

You can change the world! Or at least a little piece of it. Release your code. Specify how you want your code to be cited. License your code. Register your code. Archive your code.

Dagstuhl Manifesto on Citation: I will make explicit how to cite my software. I will cite the software I used to produce my research results. When reviewing, I will encourage others to cite the software they have used.

ASCL projects at the EWASS Hack Together Day

The European Astronomical Society (EAS) European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS) meeting, held June 26-30 in Prague, had its first Hack Together Day, coordinated by Abigail Stevens (U Amsterdam), Amruta Jaodand (ASTRON), and Matteo Bachetti (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari).

The projects were varied and some participants worked on more than one. I proposed two ASCL-related projects for this, both of which had willing participants. Daniel Evans (Keele U) worked on creating a dataset of keywords for ASCL entries based on their associated papers, and Jessica Kirkby-Kent (Keele U), Eleonora Alei (INAF – Astronomical Observatory of Padua) and I worked on finding preferred citation information for codes that didn’t have it. Since we were working from an open Google spreadsheet, the link to the spreadsheet was tweeted out several times during the Hack Together Day and later, allowing others not at EWASS to participate in this Hack Together Day project that day and in subsequent days, to good effect.

Kirkby-Kent, Alei, and I looked for preferred citation info for at least 184 codes and found this information for 45 codes, so we have a yield of 24.5% — we found citation information on 24.5% of the code sites we looked at. Another two codes had citation information added to them by unknown users during the Hack event, and later, citation information was added for several more codes. I spent last weekend with the data Kirkby-Kent, Alei, mostly anonymous others, and I gathered and adding the collected preferred citations to ASCL entries, editing a total of 52 entries to add this important information. I still have a bit of information to go through and get clarification on, and will soon add that, too, and then will go back through the Google spreadsheet again, as I see someone — I suspect Kirkby-Kent! — has been methodically adding more information. (Thank you!!)

Evans continued to build the dataset after EWASS and found a few bibcode anomalies along the way, which I’ll share with ADS at a later time. He has sent me email to let me know his searching is complete and he is getting the results into reasonable shape so this information can be added to the ASCL, too. Having this information will be very useful to anyone who uses the ASCL to find software. (Thank you!!)

I am so glad I participated in the Hack Together Day, and am grateful to Evans, Kirkby-Kent,  Alei, and all others who gathered information for the ASCL, and to Jaodand, Stevens, and Bachetti for planning it. Thank you!

Developments and Practices in Astronomy Research Software at EWASS 2017

The annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS), the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS), was held June 26-30 in beautiful Prague. As mentioned in a previous blog post, Abigail Stevens (U Amsterdam), Amruta Jaodand (ASTRON), Matteo Bachetti (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari), Rein Warmels (ESO), and I organized a Special Session titled Developments and Practices in Astronomy Research Software. Special Sessions at EWASS can be from one to three 90-minute blocks; we organized three blocks, each with its own focus and all scheduled on Wednesday, June 28, which were:

Best practices for code development and management
Perspectives in research software
Astronomy software packages review

The first two sessions opened with review talks, then had a series of slightly shorter presentations, each with a particular focus. Each of these sessions concluded with a 30-minute period in which the floor was open to all to ask questions of the speakers and discuss the issues and information that had been shared during the 90 minutes. The third session offered talks on specific popular software packages and concluded with lightning talks on the software posters submitted to this Special Session. In addition to this series of talks, a Hack Together Day was organized collaboratively that offered more information on and assistance with installing and/or using many of the software packages presented.

Session titles and presenters for the software sessions that Abigail Stevens (U Amsterdam), Amruta Jaodand (ASTRON), Matteo Bachietti (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari), Rein Warmels (ESO), and I organize are listed below, and if you want to read through the Storify of session tweets, compiled by Stevens as a Hack Together Day project, that’s here: https://storify.com/abigailstev/developments-and-practices-in-astronomy-research-s

Best practices for code development and management
Moderator: Rein Warmels, ESO, Germany
This session opened with a talk by Simon Portegies Zwart (Leiden University, NL), author of AMUSE and other astro codes, on Reproducible science in scientific computing. He laid the groundwork for this block of talks by presenting the difficulties of reproducibility in simulation software, the best practices his group uses, and the philosophy behind AMUSE, which includes standardizing interfaces and automating as much as possible. His talk included simulations that made for an extremely large presentation file, so a partial set of his slides is provided.
(slides: PDF)

Simon Portegies Zwart presenting at EWASS

Simon Portegies Zwart

In the interest of time, I will not summarize the other talks in this block, but will say you should have been there! These were excellent presentations with many great practices and ideas shared. In the discussion, moderated by Warmels, someone asked about “short codes,” and as luck would have it, the next block had a talk on just that topic. There was disagreement on some voiced opinions, and many ideas shared that warrant greater discussion.

The other talks in this block were:

Software development best practices from Astropy
Thomas Robitaille, Freelance, UK (slides: PDF)

A Computer Science Perspective on the Astronomy Research Software Process
John Wenskovitch, Virginia Tech & Allegheny College, US (slides: PDF)

TARDIS: A radiative transfer code, an open source community, and an interdisciplinary collaboration
Wolfgang Kerzendorf, ESO, DE (slides: PDF)

Research software best practices: Transparency, credit, and citation
Alice Allen, ASCL, US (slides: PDF, PPTX)

Perspectives in research software
Moderator: Alice Allen, ASCL, USA/
Kai Polsterer (Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, DE) set the stage for the second block in the Special Session with his presentation Reproducibility in Era of Data-Driven Science. He also highlighted the difficulties of reproducibility, among them that different computing environments can produce different results from the same code, and though he acknowledged the difficulties in doing so, advocates that publications, datasets (including raw and training data), codes, component and software configuration, and computing environments need to be shared for full reproducibility. Or as John Wenskovitch summarized in a tweet during this presentation, “Publish everything. EVERYTHING. Architecture, model, code, data, parameters, …” We are not there yet, but must share what we can when we can to increase reproducibility.
(slides: PDF)

Kai Polsterer, image by @K_Bonson

The other talks in this second of three blocks were:

Should short codes used for astronomy research be made public?
Robert Nemiroff, Michigan Technological University, US (slides: PDF, PPTX)

Giving credit where credit is due: the role of ADS in discovering and citing software in scholarly publications
Sergi Blanco-Cuaresma, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, US (slides: PDF)

Fifteen years of WISE technology software development and operations
Gijs Verdoes Kleijn, University of Groningen, NL (slides: PDF)

CDS reference services supporting astronomy research
Mark Allen, CDS, Observatoire Astronomique De Strasbourg, FR (slides: PDF)

Astronomy software packages review
Moderator: Amruta Jaodand, ASTRON, NL
The third block of talks in this Special Session presented software packages useful for software research, from the well-established AstroPy to, in the short poster presentations, newly-developed software such as SPARTAN. The talks in this 90-minute block were:

The Astropy Project
Thomas Robitaille, Freelance, UK (slides: PDF)

Stingray and Dave: Spectral timing for all
Matteo Bachetti, INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari, IT (slides: PDF)

Living on the fringe: Making CASA ready for VLBI
 Ilse van Bemmel, JIVE, NL

Interactive widgets for the Jupyter notebook
 Maarten Breddels, Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, NL (Jupyter notebook, ipywidgets demo (PDF), poster)

Lightning poster talks

Again, you should have been there! One blog post cannot possibly convey everything shared in this Special Session, but the slides the presenters have shared captures some of the great goodness in these talks. My thanks to all the presenters, to my co-organizers, and to the attendees who made this session so interesting and excellent, to EWASS for accepting our proposals, and to HITS for providing the ASCL with funding that allowed us to participate.

ASCL at the 2017 European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS) meeting

The European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS) was held June 26-30 in Prague and attended by over 1,100 people, and the ASCL was there! This post is an overview of the ASCL’s participation in the event; a subsequent post (or two) will provide more detailed information and links to slide decks for sessions the ASCL was involved in organizing.

Program page for software talks

Program page for software talks
Image by Amruta Jaodand

This was my first time attending EWASS, which was initially brought to my attention by Keith Smith (Science). It was also my first time in Prague. My activities since the meeting have included submitting proposals (with others) for EWASS 2018, which will be in Liverpool, and pricing short-term apartment rentals in Prague; clearly, I liked both the meeting and the city very much! My thanks to Keith for cluing me in to this fine meeting.

ASCL Advisory Committee member Rein Warmels (ESO) and I partnered with Abigail Stevens (U Amsterdam), Amruta Jaodand (ASTRON), and Matteo Bachetti (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari) on software-related sessions for EWASS 2017; our collaboration resulted in a day of talks on Wednesday called Developments and Practices in Astronomy Research Software and a Hack Together Day on Thursday, this latter coordinated by Stevens, Jaodand, and Bachetti.

The ASCL was well represented, with ASCL co-founder Robert Nemiroff (MTU) giving a talk on short codes and Warmels and I each moderating 90-minute sessions on software, both with a discussion period; I also gave a presentation on the ASCL and participated in the Hack Together Day.

The Hack Together Day had numerous exciting projects; the ASCL’s projects were less glamorous than most others but yielded really useful information, some of which has already been added to ASCL entries.

Our collective efforts went very well, despite a few worrisome moments along the way. The room our Special Session presentations were in had 98 seats; perhaps 90% were filled for these sessions, and there were people also standing in the room. The presenters/presentations were great and the discussions were lively, and more information about these sessions will be posted soon.

There was of course much much more to EWASS than our efforts; notable for those software-inclined were the astrometry, big data, and astroinformatics sessions and associated posters for all of these sessions. In all, an excellent conference!