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What to do with an astronomy code? Share it!

The poster I’m presenting at AAS 223 is below. Please stop by poster 255.25 on Tuesday; I would love to know whether you share your codes and why you do or do not.

AAS2014JanPosterFinal-20percentsize
Abstract: Now that you’ve written a useful astronomy code for your soon-to-be-published research, you have to figure out what you want to do with it. Our suggestion? Share it! This presentation highlights the means and benefits of sharing your code. Make your code citable — submit it to the Astrophysics Source Code Library and have it indexed by ADS! The Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL) is a free online registry of source codes of interest to astronomers and astrophysicists. With over 700 codes, it is continuing its rapid growth, with an average of 17 new codes a month. The editors seek out codes for inclusion; indexing by ADS improves the discoverability of codes and provides a way to cite codes as separate entries, especially codes without papers that describe them.

Authors: Alice Allen, Astrophysics Source Code Library
Alberto Accomazzi, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Bruce Berriman, California Institute of Technology
Kimberly DuPrie, Astrophysics Source Code Library
Robert Hanisch, Space Telescope Science Institute/Virtual Astronomical Observatory
Jessica Mink, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Robert Nemiroff, Michigan Technological University
Lior Shamir, Lawrence Technological University
Keith Shortridge, Australian Astronomical Observatory
Mark Taylor, University of Bristol, UK
Peter Teuben, University of Maryland
John Wallin, Middle Tennessee State University

ASCL at AAS 223

The ASCL will be at the AAS meeting in (not quite) Washington, DC next week; I’ll be handing out (non-glowing) pens like crazy at both the ASCL poster (255.25, titled You’ve Written a Cool Astronomy Code! Now What Do You Do with It?) and the Special Session (more information below) on Tuesday, too. I hope you’ll stop by the poster to say hi, talk codes, and grab a pen!

The AAS’s Working Group on Astronomical Software (WGAS) and the ASCL are holding a Special Session on code sharing that includes presentations and an open discussion. Peter Teuben and Robert Hanisch will moderate the session, which will be held on Tuesday, January 7, 2:00 to 3:30 in National Harbor 5, Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center.

The panelists and topics for the session are:

Benjamin J. Weiner, Occupy Hard Drives: Making your work more valuable by giving it away
G. Bruce Berriman, Maintaining a user community for the Montage Image Mosaic Toolkit
Gary J. Ferland, Cloudy – the non-equilibrium microphysics of gas and dust, and its observed spectrum
Daniel S. Katz, NSF policies on software and data sharing and their implementation
Erik J. Tollerud, The Astropy Project’s self-herding cats development model
David W. Hogg, Costs and benefits of developing out in the open

After the presentations, Peter will open the floor for questions and discussion; at the end of the discussion, Bob will summarize the themes and points and will close the Special Session.

We’ll be tweeting, too, especially during the Special Session on Tuesday: @asclnet or #asclnet. See you (in person or online) next week!

ASCL at ADASS

The ASCL is participating in ADASS in the following ways:

Not going to ADASS but want to participate in the BoF session? We’d love to have your input and ideas. We’ll be running a Twitter feed running throughout the BoF  (follow @asclnet). What else might work for you?

Citations redux

I’ve recently learned that some citations to ASCL (and arXiv) entries are not caught by ADS because some BibTeX styles (.bst) don’t support the eprint field, which ADS uses when generating the BibTeX for ASCL and arXiv entries. The lack of support for the eprint field results in a citation that formats the ascl ID incorrectly; for ADS to be able to find and count the citation, the ascl ID needs to be formatted just as it appears in the code entry, e.g. ascl:1010.051 for NEMO. The arXiv site has a list of BibTeX styles that have been updated to support the eprint field, and Norman Gray’s nice urlbst code can add this functionality to existing .bst files.

(This information has been added to the Citing ASCL code entries page.)

Astrophysics Code Sharing II: The Sequel at the January 2014 AAS meeting

The ASCL, along with the AAS’s Working Group on Astronomical Software (WGAS), is coordinating a Special Session at the January 2014 AAS meeting. This session is scheduled for 2:00 PM on January 7, and will feature case studies on code release for AstroPy, Montage, and Cloudy in addition to talks on the state of code sharing and funding agencies’ policies.

The session will be moderated by Peter Teuben and Robert Hanisch; the speakers for this session are:

G. Bruce Berriman, NExScI, PAC, Caltech
Gary J. Ferland, University of Kentucky
David W. Hogg, New York University
Daniel S. Katz, National Science Foundation
Erik J. Tollerud, Yale University
Benjamin J. Weiner, University of Arizona

After the presentations, the floor will be opened for discussion on ways to encourage code sharing to improve the transparency and efficiency of research and mitigate the negative aspects of releasing code.

 

July and August 2013 additions to the ASCL

Twenty codes were added to the ASCL in July, and eighteen in August.

July:
AstroTaverna: Tool for Scientific Workflows in Astronomy
cosmoxi2d: Two-point galaxy correlation function calculation
CTI Correction Code
DustEM: Dust extinction and emission modelling
ETC++: Advanced Exposure-Time Calculations

FieldInf: Field Inflation exact integration routines
im2shape: Bayesian Galaxy Shape Estimation
ITERA: IDL Tool for Emission-line Ratio Analysis
K3Match: Point matching in 3D space
LENSVIEW: Resolved gravitational lens images modeling

MAH: Minimum Atmospheric Height
Monte Python: Monte Carlo code for CLASS in Python
NEST: Noble Element Simulation Technique
Obit: Radio Astronomy Data Handling
orbfit: Orbit fitting software

phoSim: Photon Simulator
PURIFY: Tools for radio-interferometric imaging
Shapelets: Image Modelling
SIMX: Event simulator
SOPT: Sparse OPTimisation

August:
APPSPACK: Asynchronous Parallel Pattern Search
BASIN: Beowulf Analysis Symbolic INterface
Ceph_code: Cepheid light-curves fitting
ChiantiPy: Python package for the CHIANTI atomic database
CReSyPS: Stellar population synthesis code

CRUSH: Comprehensive Reduction Utility for SHARC-2 (and more…)
GYRE: Stellar oscillation code
JHelioviewer: Visualization software for solar physics data
LensEnt2: Maximum-entropy weak lens reconstruction
LOSSCONE: Capture rates of stars by a supermassive black hole

MapCurvature: Map Projections
MoogStokes: Zeeman polarized radiative transfer
RADLite: Raytracer for infrared line spectra
SMILE: Orbital analysis and Schwarzschild modeling of triaxial stellar systems
SPEX: High-resolution cosmic X-ray spectra analysis

SYN++: Standalone SN spectrum synthesis
SYNAPPS: Forward-modeling of supernova spectroscopy data sets
THELI GUI: Optical, near- & mid-infrared imaging data reduction

Also in August, we added one very cool web resource, the NASA Exoplanet Archive.

June 2013 additions to the ASCL

Sixteen codes were added to the ASCL in June:

BEHR: Bayesian Estimation of Hardness Ratios
Bessel: Fast Bessel Function Jn(z) Routine for Large n,z
grmonty: Relativistic radiative transport Monte Carlo code
Harmony: Synchrotron Emission Coefficients
LRG DR7 Likelihood Software

MADCOW: Microwave Anisotropy Dataset Computational softWare
MAPPINGS III: Modelling And Prediction in PhotoIonized Nebulae and Gasdynamical Shocks
Pico: Parameters for the Impatient Cosmologist
PROM4: 1D isothermal and isobaric modeler for solar prominences
PROS: Multi-mission X-ray analysis software system

SAC: Sheffield Advanced Code
STF: Structure Finder
Tapir: A web interface for transit/eclipse observability
VHD: Viscous pseudo-Newtonian accretion
Yaxx: Yet another X-ray extractor

ZEUS-2D: Simulation of fluid dynamical flows

Preserving.exe: Toward a National Strategy for Preserving Software

Photo credit: Peter Teuben

On May 20 and 21, the Library of Congress’s Digital Preservation program held Preserving.exe: Toward a National Strategy for Preserving Software, which focused on preserving software as digital artifacts of life in the late 20th-early 21st century. Robert Hanisch, Peter Teuben, and Alice Allen attended, and Peter, chair of our Advisory Committee, presented a talk on the ASCL. The slides from Peter’s talk are now available online.