Category Archives: news

AAS 221 splinter meeting “Astrophysics Code Sharing?”

Yesterday, Peter Teuben (UMd) moderated the splinter meeting “Astrophysics Code Sharing?” at the AAS 221 meeting in Long Beach. Panelists Omar Laurino (CfA), Robert Hanisch (STScI/VAO), Bruce Berriman (IPAC, Caltech), and I (that’d be Alice, editor of the ASCL) made short presentations before the floor was opened for comments. Spirited, even passionate, discussion, ensued, touching on why codes might not be released, sociological changes needed to foster release, the difference between release for transparency and release for reuse, the need to find a way to recognize those who join a collaborative coding project after the initial code paper is written, how to improve software writing skills among astrophysicists, and how nice it would be if the ASCL had a system and funding like the Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse’s. Okay, that last thing might have just been in my head, but it would, indeed, be nice!

The slides for the splinter meeting are online and will be made available shortly as a downloadable PDF.

Omar Laurino joins panel for AAS splinter meeting “Astrophysics Code Sharing?”

Omar Laurino (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) has joined the panel for the ASCL-sponsored splinter meeting “Astrophysics Code Sharing?” at the upcoming AAS meeting in Long Beach. The topic of his short presentation is What do we want to accomplish?

Session date/time/location:
Wednesday, January 9
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Regency Ballroom D (Downtown Hyatt Long Beach)

Peter Teuben (Astronomy Department, UMD) will discuss the results of sessions on code release and discoverability from earlier conferences; he will also moderate the discussion. Robert Hanisch (STScI/VAO) will talk on Integrity in the publication process and Bruce Berriman (IPAC, Caltech) will cover Code repositories in other disciplines. ASCL editor Alice Allen will share a little information about (surprise!) the ASCL. The floor will be open for discussion and sharing after the five-minute presentations. And we’ll have glow-in-the-dark pencils to give away, too!

Astrophysics Code Sharing?

Astrophysics Code Sharing? is the title of a splinter meeting the ASCL is sponsoring at the upcoming AAS meeting in Long Beach. The session date/time/location are:

Wednesday, January 9
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Regency Ballroom D (Downtown Hyatt Long Beach)

Peter Teuben (Astronomy Department, University of Maryland) will chair the discussion. Some of the subjects to be covered in the presentations highlight recent developments:

Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL)
Results of recent discussion about code release and discoverability: eScience meeting (Chicago, Oct 2012), ADASS conference (Urbana-Champaign, Nov 2012)
Integrity in the publication process
Code repositories in other disciplines

We invite participants to suggest other short topics to present by contacting the organizers at editor@ascl.net. The panelists presenting the topics listed above include Bruce Berriman (IPAC, Caltech), Robert J. Hanisch (STScI/VAO), and Alice Allen (ASCL).

After short presentations on the state of astronomical software, the floor will be opened for discussion on issues relating to the discoverability of codes and transparency of numerical and computational research methods.

ADS BibTeX records for citing ASCL entries

ADS is currently generating incorrect BibTeX records for citations to code entries in the ASCL. This will be fixed, but in the meantime, here’s an example of what is being generated and how to fix it, courtesy of Mark Taylor and Alberto Accomazzi.

Hitting the “Bibtex entry for this abstract” button on the ADS page for the ASCL Sherpa entry gives:

@ARTICLE{2011ascl.soft07005F,
author = {{Freeman}, P. and {Nguyen}, D. and {Doe}, S. and {Siemiginowska}, A.
},
title = “{Sherpa: CIAO Modeling and Fitting Package}”,
journal = {Astrophysics Source Code Library},
year = 2011,
month = jul,
pages = {7005},
adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011ascl.soft07005F},
adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

The identifier that should be in “pages” is “1107.005” as ASCL IDs are all of the form yymm.nnn. However, a better Bibtex entry format is:

@ARTICLE{2011ascl.soft07005F,
author = {{Freeman}, P. and {Nguyen}, D. and {Doe}, S. and {Siemiginowska}, A.
},
title = “{Sherpa: CIAO Modeling and Fitting Package}”,
journal = {Astrophysics Source Code Library},
year = 2011,
month = jul,
eprint = {ascl:1107.005},
adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011ascl.soft07005F},
adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

Note the removal of “page” and the addition of the “eprint” field.

After running LaTeX and BibTeX on it, it should generate an entry in the .bbl file that looks like this:

bibitem[{{Freeman et al.}(2011)]{2011ascl.soft07005F}
{Freeman}, P., {Nguyen}, D., {Doe}, S., and {Siemiginowska}, A. 2011
Astrophysics Source Code Library, eprint{ascl:1107.005}

My thanks to Dr. Accomazzi and Dr. Taylor for their work on this!

Two new members join the Advisory Committee

Keith Shortridge at the Australian Astronomical Observatory and Mark Taylor at the University of Bristol (UK) have graciously agreed to serve on the ASCL’s Advisory Committee.

Dr. Shortridge has written data reduction and data acquisition software throughout his career. He has an increasing interest in the way software is developed and in communication in the astronomical software field, and is associated with the AstroShare project. He wrote the Figaro data reduction system for Palomar early in his career, and his software AAOGlimpse was presented at the XXI ADASS conference.

Dr. Taylor has been writing astronomical software since 1998. His work has focused on processing catalogs of astronomical objects (galaxies and stars), particularly in the context of the emerging Virtual Observatory. He has worked on Starlink, AstroGrid, Euro-VOTech and the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory, and is the author of several widely-used tools, including the interactive graphical viewer and tabular data editor TOPCAT.

ASCL at ADASS

ASCL has a display table at ADASS XXII; below is the short presentation we are running at the table.

October 2012 additions

Thirty-one codes were added to the ASCL in October; on October 31, there were 546 codes in the library.

BOOTTRAN: Error Bars for Keplerian Orbital Parameters
CALCLENS: Curved-sky grAvitational Lensing for Cosmological Light conE simulatioNS
Consistent Trees: Gravitationally Consistent Halo Catalogs and Merger Trees for Precision Cosmology
ConvPhot: A profile-matching algorithm for precision photometry
EZ: A Tool For Automatic Redshift Measurement

FLUKA: Fully integrated particle physics Monte Carlo simulation package
GASGANO: Data File Organizer
GOSSIP: SED fitting code
GP2PCF: Brute-force computation of 2-point correlation functions
HAM2D: 2D Shearing Box Model

inf_solv: Kerr inflow solver
McPHAC: McGill Planar Hydrogen Atmosphere Code
ORBADV: ORBital ADVection by interpolation
PAHFIT: Properties of PAH Emission
pPXF: Penalized Pixel-Fitting stellar kinematics extraction

PVS-GRMHD: Conservative GRMHD Primitive Variable Solvers
PyCosmic: Detecting cosmics in CALIFA and other fiber-fed integral-field spectroscopy datasets
QFitsView: FITS file viewer
QYMSYM: A GPU-accelerated hybrid symplectic integrator
Rockstar: Phase-space halo finder

RVLIN: Fitting Keplerian curves to radial velocity data
Sapporo: N-body simulation library for GPUs
SearchCal: The JMMC Evolutive Search Calibrator Tool
SGNAPS: Software for Graphical Navigation, Analysis and Plotting of Spectra
SMART: Spectroscopic Modeling Analysis and Reduction Tool

Specview: 1-D spectral visualization and analysis of astronomical spectrograms
Systemic Console: Advanced analysis of exoplanetary data
TA-DA: A Tool for Astrophysical Data Analysis
Tempo2: Pulsar Timing Package
TRIP: General computer algebra system for celestial mechanics

TwoDSSM: Self-gravitating 2D shearing sheet

September 2012 additions

Fifteen codes were added to the ASCL in September, bringing the number to 515.

ANNz: Artificial Neural Networks for estimating photometric redshifts
Aspects: Probabilistic/positional association of catalogs of sources
Bayesian Blocks: Detecting and characterizing local variability in time series
CHORIZOS: CHi-square cOde for parameterRized modeling and characterIZation of phOtometry and Spectrophotmetry
DiskFit: Modeling Asymmetries in Disk Galaxies

FAMIAS: Frequency Analysis and Mode Identification for AsteroSeismology
HARM: A Numerical Scheme for General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics
IRACproc: IRAC Post-BCD Processing
JAGS: Just Another Gibbs Sampler
LSD: Large Survey Database framework

macula: Rotational modulations in the photometry of spotted stars
MeqTrees: Software package for implementing Measurement Equations
Phantom-GRAPE: SIMD accelerated numerical library for N-body simulations
Scanamorphos: Maps from scan observations made with bolometer arrays
TMCalc: Fast estimation of stellar metallicity [Fe/H]

NEMO 3D has been released (updated code, not the fish)

Peter Teuben, main developer of the code NEMO (and ASCL Advisory Committee chair) released a new version of the code, dubbed NEMO 3D, yesterday. Nothing fishy about this code! It offers improved 3D applications, notably glnemo2.