ASCL.net

Astrophysics Source Code Library

Making codes discoverable since 1999

Browsing Codes

Results 2901-3000 of 3475 (3391 ASCL, 84 submitted)

Order
Title Date
 
Mode
Abstract Compact
Per Page
50100250All
[ascl:1302.010] ICORE: Image Co-addition with Optional Resolution Enhancement

ICORE is a command-line driven co-addition, mosaicking, and resolution enhancement (HiRes) tool for creating science quality products from image data in FITS format and with World Coordinate System information following the FITS-WCS standard. It includes preparatory steps such as image background matching, photometric gain-matching, and pixel-outlier rejection. Co-addition and/or HiRes'ing can be performed in either the inertial WCS or in the rest frame of a moving object. Three interpolation methods are supported: overlap-area weighting, drizzle, and weighting by the detector Point Response Function (PRF). The latter enables the creation of matched-filtered products for optimal point-source detection, but most importantly allows for resolution enhancement using a spatially-dependent deconvolution method. This is a variant of the classic Richardson-Lucy algorithm with the added benefit to simultaneously register and co-add multiple images to optimize signal-to-noise and sampling of the instrumental PSF. It can assume real (or otherwise "flat") image priors, mitigate "ringing" artifacts, and assess the quality of image solutions using statistically-motivated convergence criteria. Uncertainties are also estimated and internally validated for all products. The software supports multithreading that can be configured for different architectures. Numerous example scripts are included (with test data) to co-add and/or HiRes image data from Spitzer-IRAC/MIPS, WISE, and Herschel-SPIRE.

[ascl:1302.011] GALA: Stellar atmospheric parameters and chemical abundances

GALA is a freely distributed Fortran code to derive the atmospheric parameters (temperature, gravity, microturbulent velocity and overall metallicity) and abundances for individual species of stellar spectra using the classical method based on the equivalent widths of metallic lines. The abundances of individual spectral lines are derived by using the WIDTH9 code developed by R. L. Kurucz. GALA is designed to obtain the best model atmosphere, by optimizing temperature, surface gravity, microturbulent velocity and metallicity, after rejecting the discrepant lines. Finally, it computes accurate internal errors for each atmospheric parameter and abundance. The code obtains chemical abundances and atmospheric parameters for large stellar samples quickly, thus making GALA an useful tool in the epoch of the multi-object spectrographs and large surveys.

[ascl:1302.012] ME(SSY)**2: Monte Carlo Code for Star Cluster Simulations

ME(SSY)**2 stands for “Monte-carlo Experiments with Spherically SYmmetric Stellar SYstems." This code simulates the long term evolution of spherical clusters of stars; it was devised specifically to treat dense galactic nuclei. It is based on the pioneering Monte Carlo scheme proposed by Hénon in the 70's and includes all relevant physical ingredients (2-body relaxation, stellar mass spectrum, collisions, tidal disruption, ldots). It is basically a Monte Carlo resolution of the Fokker-Planck equation. It can cope with any stellar mass spectrum or velocity distribution. Being a particle-based method, it also allows one to take stellar collisions into account in a very realistic way. This unique code, featuring most important physical processes, allows million particle simulations, spanning a Hubble time, in a few CPU days on standard personal computers and provides a wealth of data only rivalized by N-body simulations. The current version of the software requires the use of routines from the "Numerical Recipes in Fortran 77" (http://www.nrbook.com/a/bookfpdf.php).

[ascl:1302.013] NIFTY: A versatile Python library for signal inference

NIFTY (Numerical Information Field TheorY) is a versatile library enables the development of signal inference algorithms that operate regardless of the underlying spatial grid and its resolution. Its object-oriented framework is written in Python, although it accesses libraries written in Cython, C++, and C for efficiency. NIFTY offers a toolkit that abstracts discretized representations of continuous spaces, fields in these spaces, and operators acting on fields into classes. Thereby, the correct normalization of operations on fields is taken care of automatically. This allows for an abstract formulation and programming of inference algorithms, including those derived within information field theory. Thus, NIFTY permits rapid prototyping of algorithms in 1D and then the application of the developed code in higher-dimensional settings of real world problems. NIFTY operates on point sets, n-dimensional regular grids, spherical spaces, their harmonic counterparts, and product spaces constructed as combinations of those.

[ascl:1302.014] SYNMAG Photometry: Catalog-level Matched Colors of Extended Sources

SYNMAG is a tool for producing synthetic aperture magnitudes to enable fast matched photometry at the catalog level without reprocessing imaging data. Aperture magnitudes are the most widely tabulated flux measurements in survey catalogs; obtaining reliable, matched photometry for galaxies imaged by different observatories represents a key challenge in the era of wide-field surveys spanning more than several hundred square degrees. Methods such as flux fitting, profile fitting, and PSF homogenization followed by matched-aperture photometry are all computationally expensive. An alternative solution called "synthetic aperture photometry" exploits galaxy profile fits in one band to efficiently model the observed, point-spread-function-convolved light profile in other bands and predict the flux in arbitrarily sized apertures.

[ascl:1302.015] DisPerSE: Discrete Persistent Structures Extractor

DisPerSE is open source software for the identification of persistent topological features such as peaks, voids, walls and in particular filamentary structures within noisy sampled distributions in 2D, 3D. Using DisPerSE, structure identification can be achieved through the computation of the discrete Morse-Smale complex. The software can deal directly with noisy datasets via the concept of persistence (a measure of the robustness of topological features). Although developed for the study of the properties of filamentary structures in the cosmic web of galaxy distribution over large scales in the Universe, the present version is quite versatile and should be useful for any application where a robust structure identification is required, such as for segmentation or for studying the topology of sampled functions (for example, computing persistent Betti numbers). Currently, it can be applied can work indifferently on many kinds of cell complex (such as structured and unstructured grids, 2D manifolds embedded within a 3D space, discrete point samples using delaunay tesselation, and Healpix tesselations of the sphere). The only constraint is that the distribution must be defined over a manifold, possibly with boundaries.

[ascl:1302.016] XDQSO: Photometic quasar probabilities and redshifts

XDQSO, written in IDL, calculates photometric quasar probabilities to mimick SDSS-III’s BOSS quasar target selection or photometric redshifts for quasars, whether in three redshift ranges (z < 2.2; 2.2 leq z leq 3.5; z > 3.5) or arbitrary redshift ranges.

[ascl:1302.017] ESO-MIDAS: General tools for image processing and data reduction

The ESO-MIDAS system provides general tools for image processing and data reduction with emphasis on astronomical applications including imaging and special reduction packages for ESO instrumentation at La Silla and the VLT at Paranal. In addition it contains applications packages for stellar and surface photometry, image sharpening and decomposition, statistics, data fitting, data presentation in graphical form, and more.

[ascl:1301.001] PSFEx: Point Spread Function Extractor

PSFEx (“PSF Extractor”) extracts models of the Point Spread Function (PSF) from FITS images processed with SExtractor and measures the quality of images. The generated PSF models can be used for model-fitting photometry or morphological analyses.

[ascl:1212.001] Bonsai: N-body GPU tree-code

Bonsai is a gravitational N-body tree-code that runs completely on the GPU. This reduces the amount of time spent on communication with the CPU. The code runs on NVIDIA GPUs and on a GTX480 it is able to integrate ~2.8M particles per second. The tree construction and traverse algorithms are portable to many-core devices which have support for CUDA or OpenCL programming languages.

[ascl:1212.002] XPHOT: Estimation of properties of weak X-ray sources

XPHOT is an IDL implementation of a non-parametric method for estimating the apparent and intrinsic broad-band fluxes and absorbing X-ray column densities of weak X-ray sources. XPHOT is intended for faint sources with greater than ∼5-7 counts but fewer than 100-300 counts where parametric spectral fitting methods will be superior. This method is similar to the long-standing use of color-magnitude diagrams in optical and infrared astronomy, with X-ray median energy replacing color index and X-ray source counts replacing magnitude. Though XPHOT was calibrated for thermal spectra characteristic of stars in young stellar clusters, recalibration should be possible for some other classes of faint X-ray sources such as extragalactic active galactic nuclei.

[ascl:1212.003] MPWide: Light-weight communication library for distributed computing

MPWide is a light-weight communication library for distributed computing. It is specifically developed to allow message passing over long-distance networks using path-specific optimizations. An early version of MPWide was used in the Gravitational Billion Body Project to allow simulations across multiple supercomputers.

[ascl:1212.004] MOLIERE-5: Forward and inversion model for sub-mm wavelengths

MOLIERE-5 (Microwave Observation LIne Estimation and REtrieval) is a versatile forward and inversion model for the millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths range and includes an inversion model. The MOLIERE-5 forward model includes modules for the calculation of absorption coefficients, radiative transfer, and instrumental characteristics. The radiative transfer model is supplemented by a sensitivity module for estimating the contribution to the spectrum of each catalog line at its center frequency enabling the model to effectively filter for small spectral lines. The instrument model consists of several independent modules, including the calculation of the convolution of spectra and weighting functions with the spectrometer response functions. The instrument module also provides several options for modeling of frequency-switched observations. The MOLIERE-5 inversion model calculates linear Optimal Estimation, a least-squares retrieval method which uses statistical apriori knowledge on the retrieved parameters for the regularization of ill-posed inversion problems and computes diagnostics such as the measurement and smoothing error covariance matrices along with contribution and averaging kernel functions.

[ascl:1212.005] General complex polynomial root solver

This general complex polynomial root solver, implemented in Fortran and further optimized for binary microlenses, uses a new algorithm to solve polynomial equations and is 1.6-3 times faster than the ZROOTS subroutine that is commercially available from Numerical Recipes, depending on application. The largest improvement, when compared to naive solvers, comes from a fail-safe procedure that permits skipping the majority of the calculations in the great majority of cases, without risking catastrophic failure in the few cases that these are actually required.

[ascl:1212.006] CosmoPMC: Cosmology sampling with Population Monte Carlo

CosmoPMC is a Monte-Carlo sampling method to explore the likelihood of various cosmological probes. The sampling engine is implemented with the package pmclib. It is called Population MonteCarlo (PMC), which is a novel technique to sample from the posterior. PMC is an adaptive importance sampling method which iteratively improves the proposal to approximate the posterior. This code has been introduced, tested and applied to various cosmology data sets.

[ascl:1212.007] WOLF: FITS file processor

WOLF processes FITS files and generates photometry files, annotated JPGs, opacity maps, background, transient detection and luminance changes detection. This software was used to process data for the Night Sky Live project.

[ascl:1212.008] SIR: Stokes Inversion based on Response functions

SIR is a general-purpose code capable of dealing with gradients of the physical quantities with height. It admits one and two-component model atmospheres. It allows the recovery of the stratification of the temperature, the magnetic field vector, and the line of sight velocity through the atmosphere, and the micro- and macroturbulence velocities - which are assumed to be constant with depth. It is based on the response functions, which enter a Marquardt nonlinear least-squares algorithm in a natural way. Response functions are calculated at the same time as the full radiative transfer equation for polarized light is integrated, which determines values of many free parameters in a reasonable computation time. SIR demonstrates high stability, accuracy, and uniqueness of results, even when simulated observations present signal-to-noise ratios of the order of the lowest acceptable values in real observations.

[ascl:1212.009] Aegean: Compact source finding in radio images

Aegean, written in python, finds compact sources within radio images by seeking out islands of pixels above a given threshold and then using the curvature of the image to determine how many Gaussian components should be used to describe the island. The Gaussian fitting is initiated with parameters determined from the curvature and intensity maps, and makes use of mpfit to perform a constrained fit. Aegean has been optimized for compact radio sources in images that have no diffuse background emission, but by pre-processing the images with a spatial filter, or by convolving an optical image with an appropriately small PSF, Aegean is able to produce excellent results in a range of applications.

[ascl:1212.010] Synth3: Non-magnetic spectrum synthesis code

Synth3 is a non-magnetic spectrum synthesis code. It works with model atmospheres in Kurucz format and VALD Sf line lists and features element stratification, molecular equilibrium and individual microturbulence for each line. Disk integration can be done with s3di which is included in the archive. Synth3 computes spectra emergent from the stellar atmospheres with a depth-dependent chemical composition if depth-dependent abundance is provided in the input model atmosphere file.

[ascl:1212.011] DrizzlePac: HST image software

DrizzlePac allows users to easily and accurately align and combine HST images taken at multiple epochs, and even with different instruments. It is a suite of supporting tasks for AstroDrizzle which includes:

- astrodrizzle to align and combine images
- tweakreg and tweakback for aligning images in different visits
- pixtopix transforms an X,Y pixel position to its pixel position after distortion corrections
- skytopix transforms sky coordinates to X,Y pixel positions. A reverse transformation can be done using the task pixtosky.

[ascl:1212.012] ddisk: Debris disk time-evolution

ddisk is an IDL script that calculates the time-evolution of a circumstellar debris disk. It calculates dust abundances over time for a debris-disk that is produced by a planetesimal disk that is grinding away due to collisional erosion.

[ascl:1212.013] EXSdetect: Extended X-ray Source Detection

EXSdetect is a python implementation of an X-ray source detection algorithm which is optimally designed to detected faint extended sources and makes use of Voronoi tessellation and Friend-of-Friend technique. It is a flexible tool capable of detecting extended sources down to the lowest flux levels attainable within instrumental limitations while maintaining robust photometry, high completeness, and low contamination, regardless of source morphology. EXSdetect was developed mainly to exploit the ever-increasing wealth of archival X-ray data, but is also ideally suited to explore the scientific capabilities of future X-ray facilities, with a strong focus on investigations of distant groups and clusters of galaxies.

[ascl:1212.014] Thrust: Productivity-Oriented Library for CUDA

Thrust is a parallel algorithms library which resembles the C++ Standard Template Library (STL). Thrust's high-level interface greatly enhances programmer productivity while enabling performance portability between GPUs and multicore CPUs. Interoperability with established technologies (such as CUDA, TBB, and OpenMP) facilitates integration with existing software.

[ascl:1212.015] TMAP: Tübingen NLTE Model-Atmosphere Package

The Tübingen NLTE Model-Atmosphere Package (TMAP) is a tool to calculate stellar atmospheres in spherical or plane-parallel geometry in hydrostatic and radiative equilibrium allowing departures from local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) for the population of atomic levels. It is based on the Accelerated Lambda Iteration (ALI) method and is able to account for line blanketing by metals. All elements from hydrogen to nickel may be included in the calculation with model atoms which are tailored for the aims of the user.

[ascl:1211.001] S2LET: Fast wavelet analysis on the sphere

S2LET provides high performance routines for fast wavelet analysis of signals on the sphere. It uses the SSHT code (ascl:2207.034) built on the MW sampling theorem to perform exact spherical harmonic transforms on the sphere. The resulting wavelet transform implemented in S2LET is theoretically exact, i.e. a band-limited signal can be recovered from its wavelet coefficients exactly and the wavelet coefficients capture all the information. S2LET also supports the HEALPix sampling scheme, in which case the transforms are not theoretically exact but achieve good numerical accuracy. The core routines of S2LET are written in C and have interfaces in Matlab, IDL and Java. Real signals can be written to and read from FITS files and plotted as Mollweide projections.

[ascl:1211.002] FreeEOS: Equation of State for stellar interiors calculations

FreeEOS is a Fortran library for rapidly calculating the equation of state using an efficient free-energy minimization technique that is suitable for physical conditions in stellar interiors. Converged FreeEOS solutions can be reliably determined for the first time for physical conditions occurring in stellar models with masses between 0.1 M and the hydrogen-burning limit near 0.07 M and hot brown-dwarf models just below that limit. However, an initial survey of results for those conditions showed EOS discontinuities (plasma phase transitions) and other problems which will need to be addressed in future work by adjusting the interaction radii characterizing the pressure ionization used for the FreeEOS calculations.

[ascl:1211.003] WVT Binning: Spatially adaptive 2-D binning

WVT Binning is a spatially adaptive 2-dimensional binning algorithm designed to bin sparse X-ray data. It can handle background subtracted, exposure corrected data to produce intensity images, hardness ratio maps, or temperature maps. The algorithm is an extension of Cappellari & Copin's (2003) Voronoi binning code and uses Weighted Voronoi Tesselations (WVT) to produce a very compact binning structure with a constant S/N per bin. The bin size adjusts to the required resolution in single-pixel steps, which minimizes the scatter around the target S/N. The code is very versatile and can in principle be applied to any type of data. The user manual contains instructions on how to apply the WVT binning code to X-ray data and how to extend the algorithm to other problems.

[ascl:1211.004] CORRFIT: Cross-Correlation Routines

CORRFIT is a set of routines that use the cross-correlation method to extract parameters of the line-of-sight velocity distribution from galactic spectra and stellar templates observed on the same system. It works best when the broadening function is well sampled at the spectral resolution used (e.g. 200 km/s dispersion at 2 Angstrom resolution). Results become increasingly sensitive to the spectral match between galaxy and template if the broadening function is not well sampled. CORRFIT does not work well for dispersions less than the velocity sampling interval ('delta' in the code) unless the template is perfect.

[ascl:1211.005] C-m Emu: Concentration-mass relation emulator

The concentration-mass relation for dark matter-dominated halos is one of the essential results expected from a theory of structure formation. C-m Emu is a simple numerical code for the c-M relation as a function of cosmological parameters for wCDM models generates the best-fit power-law model for each redshift separately and then interpolate between the redshifts. This produces a more accurate answer at each redshift at the minimal cost of running a fast code for every c -M prediction instead of using one fitting formula. The emulator is constructed from 37 individual models, with three nested N-body gravity-only simulations carried out for each model. The mass range covered by the emulator is 2 x 10^{12} M_sun < M <10^{15} M_sun with a corresponding redshift range of z=0 -1. Over this range of mass and redshift, as well as the variation of cosmological parameters studied, the mean halo concentration varies from c ~ 2 to c ~ 8. The distribution of the concentration at fixed mass is Gaussian with a standard deviation of one-third of the mean value, almost independent of cosmology, mass, and redshift over the ranges probed by the simulations.

[ascl:1211.006] VorBin: Voronoi binning method

VorBin (Voronoi binning method) bins two-dimensional data to a constant signal-to-noise ratio per bin. It optimally solves the problem of preserving the maximum spatial resolution of general two-dimensional data, given a constraint on the minimum signal-to-noise ratio. The method is available in both IDL and Python.

[ascl:1210.001] GP2PCF: Brute-force computation of 2-point correlation functions

The two-point correlation function is a simple statistic that quantifies the clustering of a given distribution of objects. In studies of the large scale structure of the Universe, it is an important tool containing information about the matter clustering and the evolution of the Universe at different cosmological epochs. A classical application of this statistic is the galaxy-galaxy correlation function to find constraints on the parameter Omega_m or the location of the baryonic acoustic oscillation peak. This calculation, however, is very expensive in terms of computer power and Graphics Processing Units provide one solution for efficient analysis of the increasingly larger galaxy surveys that are currently taking place.

GP2PCF is a public code in CUDA for performing this computation; with a single GPU board it is possible to achieve 120-fold speedups with respect to a standard implementation in C running on a single CPU. With respect to other solutions such as k-trees the improvement is of a factor of a few retaining full precision. The speedup is comparable to running in parallel in a cluster of O(100) cores.

[ascl:1210.002] pPXF: Penalized Pixel-Fitting stellar kinematics extraction

pPXF extracts the stellar kinematics or stellar population from absorption-line spectra of galaxies using the Penalized Pixel-Fitting method (pPXF) developed by Cappellari & Emsellem (2004, PASP, 116, 138). Additional features implemented in the pPXF routine include:

  • Optimal template: Fitted together with the kinematics to minimize template-mismatch errors. Also useful to extract gas kinematics or derive emission-corrected line-strengths indexes. One can use synthetic templates to study the stellar population of galaxies via "Full Spectral Fitting" instead of using traditional line-strengths.
  • Regularization of templates weights: To reduce the noise in the recovery of the stellar population parameters and attach a physical meaning to the output weights assigned to the templates in term of the star formation history (SFH) or metallicity distribution of an individual galaxy.
  • Iterative sigma clipping: To clean the spectra from residual bad pixels or cosmic rays.
  • Additive/multiplicative polynomials: To correct low frequency continuum variations. Also useful for calibration purposes.

The code is available in IDL and in Python versions.

[ascl:1210.003] GOSSIP: SED fitting code

GOSSIP fits the electro-magnetic emission of an object (the SED, Spectral Energy Distribution) against synthetic models to find the simulated one that best reproduces the observed data. It builds-up the observed SED of an object (or a large sample of objects) combining magnitudes in different bands and eventually a spectrum; then it performs a chi-square minimization fitting procedure versus a set of synthetic models. The fitting results are used to estimate a number of physical parameters like the Star Formation History, absolute magnitudes, stellar mass and their Probability Distribution Functions.

[ascl:1210.004] EZ: A Tool For Automatic Redshift Measurement

EZ (Easy-Z) estimates redshifts for extragalactic objects. It compares the observed spectrum with a set of (user given) spectral templates to find out the best value for the redshift. To accomplish this task, it uses a highly configurable set of algorithms. EZ is easily extendible with new algorithms. It is implemented as a set of C programs and a number of python classes. It can be used as a standalone program, or the python classes can be directly imported by other applications.

[ascl:1210.005] SGNAPS: Software for Graphical Navigation, Analysis and Plotting of Spectra

SGNAPS allows the user to plot a one-dimensional spectrum, together with the corresponding two-dimensional and a reference spectrum (for example the sky spectrum). This makes it possible to check on the reality of spectral features that are present in the one-dimensional spectrum, which could be due to bad sky subtraction or fringing residuals. It is also possible to zoom in and out all three spectra, edit the one-dimensional spectrum, smooth it with a simple square window function, measure the signal to noise over a selected wavelength interval, and fit the position of a selected spectral line. SGNAPS also allows the astronomer to obtain quick redshift estimates by providing a tool to fit or mark the position of a spectral line, and a function that will compute a list of possible redshifts based on a list of known lines in galaxy spectra. SGNAPS is derived from the plotting tools of VIPGI and contains almost all of their capabilities.

NOTE: SGNAPS functionality has been transitioned to EZ.

[ascl:1210.006] TA-DA: A Tool for Astrophysical Data Analysis

TA-DA is a pre-compiled IDL widget-based application which greatly simplifies and improves the analysis of stellar photometric data in comparison with theoretical models and allows the derivation of stellar parameters from multi-band photometry. It is flexible and can address a number of problems, from the interpolation of stellar models or sets of stellar physical parameters in general to the computation of synthetic photometry in arbitrary filters or units. It also analyzes observed color-magnitude diagrams and allows a Bayesian derivation of stellar parameters (and extinction) based on multi-band data.

[ascl:1210.007] FLUKA: Fully integrated particle physics Monte Carlo simulation package

FLUKA (FLUktuierende KAskade) is a general-purpose tool for calculations of particle transport and interactions with matter. FLUKA can simulate with high accuracy the interaction and propagation in matter of about 60 different particles, including photons and electrons from 1 keV to thousands of TeV, neutrinos, muons of any energy, hadrons of energies up to 20 TeV (up to 10 PeV by linking FLUKA with the DPMJET code) and all the corresponding antiparticles, neutrons down to thermal energies and heavy ions. The program, written in Fortran, can also transport polarised photons (e.g., synchrotron radiation) and optical photons. Time evolution and tracking of emitted radiation from unstable residual nuclei can be performed online.

[ascl:1210.008] Rockstar: Phase-space halo finder

Rockstar (Robust Overdensity Calculation using K-Space Topologically Adaptive Refinement) identifies dark matter halos, substructure, and tidal features. The approach is based on adaptive hierarchical refinement of friends-of-friends groups in six phase-space dimensions and one time dimension, which allows for robust (grid-independent, shape-independent, and noise-resilient) tracking of substructure. Our method is massively parallel (up to 10^5 CPUs) and runs on the largest current simulations (>10^10 particles) with high efficiency (10 CPU hours and 60 gigabytes of memory required per billion particles analyzed). Rockstar offers significant improvement in substructure recovery as compared to several other halo finders.

[ascl:1210.009] PAHFIT: Properties of PAH Emission

PAHFIT is an IDL tool for decomposing Spitzer IRS spectra of PAH emission sources, with a special emphasis on the careful recovery of ambiguous silicate absorption, and weak, blended dust emission features. PAHFIT is primarily designed for use with full 5-35 micron Spitzer low-resolution IRS spectra. PAHFIT is a flexible tool for fitting spectra, and you can add or disable features, compute combined flux bands, change fitting limits, etc., without changing the code.

PAHFIT uses a simple, physically-motivated model, consisting of starlight, thermal dust continuum in a small number of fixed temperature bins, resolved dust features and feature blends, prominent emission lines (which themselves can be blended with dust features), as well as simple fully-mixed or screen dust extinction, dominated by the silicate absorption bands at 9.7 and 18 microns. Most model components are held fixed or are tightly constrained. PAHFIT uses Drude profiles to recover the full strength of dust emission features and blends, including the significant power in the wings of the broad emission profiles. This means the resulting feature strengths are larger (by factors of 2-4) than are recovered by methods which estimate the underlying continuum using line segments or spline curves fit through fiducial wavelength anchors.

[ascl:1210.010] CALCLENS: Curved-sky grAvitational Lensing for Cosmological Light conE simulatioNS

CALCLENS, written in C and employing widely available software libraries, efficiently computes weak gravitational lensing shear signals from large N-body light cone simulations over a curved sky. The algorithm properly accounts for the sky curvature and boundary conditions, is able to produce redshift-dependent shear signals including corrections to the Born approximation by using multiple-plane ray tracing, and properly computes the lensed images of source galaxies in the light cone. The key feature of this algorithm is a new, computationally efficient Poisson solver for the sphere that combines spherical harmonic transform and multgrid methods. As a result, large areas of sky (~10,000 square degrees) can be ray traced efficiently at high-resolution using only a few hundred cores on widely available machines. Coupled with realistic galaxy populations placed in large N-body light cone simulations, CALCLENS is ideally suited for the construction of synthetic weak lensing shear catalogs to be used to test for systematic effects in data analysis procedures for upcoming large-area sky surveys.

[ascl:1210.011] Consistent Trees: Gravitationally Consistent Halo Catalogs and Merger Trees for Precision Cosmology

Consistent Trees generates merger trees and halo catalogs which explicitly ensure consistency of halo properties (mass, position, velocity, radius) across timesteps. It has demonstrated the ability to improve both the completeness (through detecting and inserting otherwise missing halos) and purity (through detecting and removing spurious objects) of both merger trees and halo catalogs. Consistent Trees is able to robustly measure the self-consistency of halo finders and to directly measure the uncertainties in halo positions, halo velocities, and the halo mass function for a given halo finder based on consistency between snapshots in cosmological simulations.

[ascl:1210.012] SearchCal: The JMMC Evolutive Search Calibrator Tool

SearchCal builds an evolutive catalog of stars suitable as calibrators within any given user-defined angular distance and magnitude around a scientific target. SearchCal can select suitable bright calibration stars (V ≤ 10; K ≤ 5.0) for obtaining the ultimate precision of current interferometric instruments like the VLTI and faint calibration stars up to K ~ 15 around the scientific target. Star catalogs available at the CDS are searched via web requests and provide the useful astrometric and photometric informations for selecting calibrators. The missing photometries are computed with an accuracy of about 0.1 mag. The stellar angular diameter is estimated with a precision of about 10% through newly determined surface-brightness versus color-index relations based on the I, J, H and K magnitudes. For each star the squared visibility is computed taking into account the central wavelength and the maximum baseline of the predicted observations.

[ascl:1210.013] ConvPhot: A profile-matching algorithm for precision photometry

ConvPhot measures colors between two images having different resolutions. ConvPhot is designed to work especially for faint galaxies, accurately measuring colors in relatively crowded fields. It makes full use of the spatial and morphological information contained in the highest quality images to analyze multiwavelength data with inhomogeneous image quality.
Written in 2007, ConvPhot has been superseded by T-PHOT (ascl:1609.001)

[ascl:1210.014] TRIP: General computer algebra system for celestial mechanics

TRIP is an interactive computer algebra system that is devoted to perturbation series computations, and specially adapted to celestial mechanics. Its development started in 1988, as an upgrade of the special purpose FORTRAN routines elaborated by J. Laskar for the demonstration of the chaotic behavior of the Solar System. TRIP is a mature and efficient tool for handling multivariate generalized power series, and embeds two kernels, a symbolic and a numerical kernel. This numerical kernel communicates with Gnuplot or Grace to plot the graphics and allows one to plot the numerical evaluation of symbolic objects.

[ascl:1210.015] Tempo2: Pulsar Timing Package

Tempo2 is a pulsar timing package developed to be used both for general pulsar timing applications and also for pulsar timing array research in which data-sets from multiple pulsars need to be processed simultaneously. It was initially developed by George Hobbs and Russell Edwards as part of the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array project. Tempo2 is based on the original Tempo (ascl:1509.002) code and can be used (from the command-line) in a similar fashion. It is very versatile and can be extended by plugins.

[ascl:1210.016] Specview: 1-D spectral visualization and analysis of astronomical spectrograms

Specview is a tool for 1-D spectral visualization and analysis of astronomical spectrograms. Written in Java, it is capable of reading all the Hubble Space Telescope spectral data formats as well as data from several other instruments (such as IUE, FUSE, ISO, FORS and SDSS), preview spectra from MAST, and data from generic FITS and ASCII tables. It can read data from Virtual Observatory servers, and read and write spectrogram data in Virtual Observatory SED format. It can also read files in the SPC Galactic format used in the chemistry field. Once ingested, data can be plotted and examined with a large selection of custom settings. Specview supports instrument-specific data quality handling, flexible spectral units conversions, custom plotting attributes, plot annotations, tiled plots, hardcopy to JPEG files and PostScript file or printer, etc. Specview can be used to build wide-band SEDs, overplotting or combining data from the same astronomical source taken with different instruments and/or spectral bands. Data can be further processed with averaging, splicing, detrending, and Fourier filtering tools. Specview has a spectral model fitting capability that enables the user to work with multi-component models (including user-defined models) and fit models to data.

[ascl:1210.017] McPHAC: McGill Planar Hydrogen Atmosphere Code

The McGill Planar Hydrogen Atmosphere Code (McPHAC) v1.1 calculates the hydrostatic equilibrium structure and emergent spectrum of an unmagnetized hydrogen atmosphere in the plane-parallel approximation at surface gravities appropriate for neutron stars. McPHAC incorporates several improvements over previous codes for which tabulated model spectra are available: (1) Thomson scattering is treated anisotropically, which is shown to result in a 0.2%-3% correction in the emergent spectral flux across the 0.1-5 keV passband; (2) the McPHAC source code is made available to the community, allowing it to be scrutinized and modified by other researchers wishing to study or extend its capabilities; and (3) the numerical uncertainty resulting from the discrete and iterative solution is studied as a function of photon energy, indicating that McPHAC is capable of producing spectra with numerical uncertainties <0.01%. The accuracy of the spectra may at present be limited to ~1%, but McPHAC enables researchers to study the impact of uncertain inputs and additional physical effects, thereby supporting future efforts to reduce those inaccuracies. Comparison of McPHAC results with spectra from one of the previous model atmosphere codes (NSA) shows agreement to lsim1% near the peaks of the emergent spectra. However, in the Wien tail a significant deficit of flux in the spectra of the previous model is revealed, determined to be due to the previous work not considering large enough optical depths at the highest photon frequencies. The deficit is most significant for spectra with T eff < 105.6 K, though even there it may not be of much practical importance for most observations.

[ascl:1210.018] Systemic Console: Advanced analysis of exoplanetary data

Systemic Console is a tool for advanced analysis of exoplanetary data. It comprises a graphical tool for fitting radial velocity and transits datasets and a library of routines for non-interactive calculations. Among its features are interactive plotting of RV curves and transits, combined fitting of RV and transit timing (primary and secondary), interactive periodograms and FAP estimation, and bootstrap and MCMC error estimation. The console package includes public radial velocity and transit data.

[ascl:1210.019] QFitsView: FITS file viewer

QFitsView is a FITS file viewer that can display one, two, and three-dimensional FITS files. It has three modes of operation, depending of what kind of data is being displayed. One-dimensional data are shown in an x-y plot. Two-dimensional images are shown in the main window. Three-dimensional data cubes can be displayed in a variety of ways, with the third dimension shown as a x-y plot at the bottom of the image display. QFitsView was written in C++ and uses the Qt widget library, which makes it available for all major platforms: Windows, MAC OS X, and many Unix variants.

[ascl:1210.020] GASGANO: Data File Organizer

GASGANO is a GUI software tool for managing and viewing data files produced by VLT Control System (VCS) and the Data Flow System (DFS). It is developed and maintained by ESO to help its user community manage and organize astronomical data observed and produced by all VLT compliant telescopes in a systematic way. The software understands FITS, PAF, and ASCII files, and Reduction Blocks, and can group, sort, classify, filter, and search data in addition to allowing the user to browse, view, and manage them.

[ascl:1210.021] SMART: Spectroscopic Modeling Analysis and Reduction Tool

SMART is an IDL-based software tool, developed by the IRS Instrument Team at Cornell University, that allows users to reduce and analyze Spitzer data from all four modules of the Infrared Spectrograph, including the peak-up arrays. The software is designed to make full use of the ancillary files generated in the Spitzer Science Center pipeline so that it can either remove or flag artifacts and corrupted data and maximize the signal-to-noise ratio in the extraction routines. It can be run in both interactive and batch modes. SMART includes visualization tools for assessing data quality, basic arithmetic operations for either two-dimensional images or one-dimensional spectra, extraction of both point and extended sources, and a suite of spectral analysis tools.

[ascl:1210.022] HAM2D: 2D Shearing Box Model

HAM solves non-relativistic hyperbolic partial differential equations in conservative form using high-resolution shock-capturing techniques. This version of HAM has been configured to solve the magnetohydrodynamic equations of motion in axisymmetry to evolve a shearing box model.

[ascl:1210.023] inf_solv: Kerr inflow solver

The efficiency of thin disk accretion onto black holes depends on the inner boundary condition, specifically the torque applied to the disk at the last stable orbit. This is usually assumed to vanish. This code estimates the torque on a magnetized disk using a steady magnetohydrodynamic inflow model originally developed by Takahashi et al. The efficiency e can depart significantly from the classical thin disk value. In some cases e > 1, i.e., energy is extracted from the black hole.

[ascl:1210.024] ORBADV: ORBital ADVection by interpolation

ORBADV adopts a ZEUS-like scheme to solve magnetohydrodynamic equations of motion in a shearing sheet. The magnetic field is discretized on a staggered mesh, and magnetic field variables represent fluxes through zone faces. The code uses obital advection to ensure fast and accurate integration in a large shearing box.

[ascl:1210.025] TwoDSSM: Self-gravitating 2D shearing sheet

TwoDSSM solves the equations of self-gravitating hydrodynamics in the shearing sheet, with cooling. TwoDSSM is configured to use a simple, exponential cooling model, although it contains code for a more complicated (and perhaps more realistic) cooling model based on a one-zone vertical model. The complicated cooling model can be switched on using a flag.

[ascl:1210.026] PVS-GRMHD: Conservative GRMHD Primitive Variable Solvers

Conservative numerical schemes for general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) require a method for transforming between "conserved'' variables such as momentum and energy density and "primitive" variables such as rest-mass density, internal energy, and components of the four-velocity. The forward transformation (primitive to conserved) has a closed-form solution, but the inverse transformation (conserved to primitive) requires the solution of a set of five nonlinear equations. This code performs the inversion.

[ascl:1210.027] PyCosmic: Detecting cosmics in CALIFA and other fiber-fed integral-field spectroscopy datasets

The detection of cosmic ray hits (cosmics) in fiber-fed integral-field spectroscopy (IFS) data of single exposures is a challenging task because of the complex signal recorded by IFS instruments. Existing detection algorithms are commonly found to be unreliable in the case of IFS data, and the optimal parameter settings are usually unknown a priori for a given dataset. The Calar Alto legacy integral field area (CALIFA) survey generates hundreds of IFS datasets for which a reliable and robust detection algorithm for cosmics is required as an important part of the fully automatic CALIFA data reduction pipeline. PyCosmic combines the edge-detection algorithm of L.A.Cosmic with a point-spread function convolution scheme. PyCosmic is the only algorithm that achieves an acceptable detection performance for CALIFA data. Only for strongly undersampled IFS data does L.A.Cosmic exceed the performance of PyCosmic by a few percent. Thus, PyCosmic appears to be the most versatile cosmics detection algorithm for IFS data.

[ascl:1210.028] QYMSYM: A GPU-accelerated hybrid symplectic integrator

QYMSYM is a GPU accelerated 2nd order hybrid symplectic integrator that identifies close approaches between particles and switches from symplectic to Hermite algorithms for particles that require higher resolution integrations. This is a parallel code running with CUDA on a video card that puts the many processors on board to work while taking advantage of fast shared memory.

[ascl:1210.029] Sapporo: N-body simulation library for GPUs

Sapporo mimics the behavior of GRAPE hardware and uses the GPU to perform high-precision gravitational N-body simulations. It makes use of CUDA and therefore only works on NVIDIA GPUs. N-body codes currently running on GRAPE-6 can switch to Sapporo by a simple relinking of the library. Sapporo's precision is comparable to that of GRAPE-6, even though internally the GPU hardware is limited to single precision arithmetics. This limitation is effectively overcome by emulating double precision for calculating the distance between particles.

[ascl:1210.030] BOOTTRAN: Error Bars for Keplerian Orbital Parameters

BOOTTRAN calculates error bars for Keplerian orbital parameters for both single- and multiple-planet systems. It takes the best-fit parameters and radial velocity data (BJD, velocity, errors) and calculates the error bars from sampling distribution estimated via bootstrapping. It is recommended to be used together with the RVLIN (ascl:1210.031) package, which find best-fit Keplerian orbital parameters. Both RVLIN and BOOTTRAN are compatible with multiple-telescope data. BOOTTRAN also calculates the transit time and secondary eclipse time and their associated error bars. The algorithm is described in the appendix of the associated article.

[ascl:1210.031] RVLIN: Fitting Keplerian curves to radial velocity data

The RVLIN package for IDL is a set of routines that quickly fits an arbitrary number of Keplerian curves to radial velocity data. It can handle data from multiple telescopes (i.e. it solves for the offset), constraints on P, e, and time of peri passage, and can incorporate transit timing data. The code handles fixed periods and circular orbits in combination and transit time constraints, including for multiple transiting planets.

[ascl:1209.001] Bayesian Blocks: Detecting and characterizing local variability in time series

Bayesian Blocks is a time-domain algorithm for detecting localized structures (bursts), revealing pulse shapes within bursts, and generally characterizing intensity variations. The input is raw time series data, in almost any form. Three data modes are elaborated: (1) time-tagged events, (2) binned counts, and (3) measurements at arbitrary times with normal errors. The output is the most probable segmentation of the observation interval into sub-intervals during which the signal is perceptibly constant, i.e. has no statistically significant variations. The idea is not that the source is deemed to actually have this discontinuous, piecewise constant form, rather that such an approximate and generic model is often useful. Treatment of data gaps, variable exposure, extension to piecewise linear and piecewise exponential representations, multi-variate time series data, analysis of variance, data on the circle, other data modes, and dispersed data are included.

This implementation is exact and replaces the greedy, approximate, and outdated algorithm implemented in BLOCK.

[ascl:1209.002] JAGS: Just Another Gibbs Sampler

JAGS analyzes Bayesian hierarchical models using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation not wholly unlike BUGS. JAGS has three aims:

  • to have a cross-platform engine for the BUGS language;
  • to be extensible, allowing users to write their own functions, distributions and samplers; and
  • to be a platform for experimentation with ideas in Bayesian modeling.

[ascl:1209.003] LSD: Large Survey Database framework

The Large Survey Database (LSD) is a Python framework and DBMS for distributed storage, cross-matching and querying of large survey catalogs (>10^9 rows, >1 TB). The primary driver behind its development is the analysis of Pan-STARRS PS1 data. It is specifically optimized for fast queries and parallel sweeps of positionally and temporally indexed datasets. It transparently scales to more than >10^2 nodes, and can be made to function in "shared nothing" architectures.

[ascl:1209.004] CHORIZOS: CHi-square cOde for parameterRized modeling and characterIZation of phOtometry and Spectrophotmetry

CHORIZOS is a multi-purpose Bayesian code developed in IDL to compare photometric data with model spectral energy distributions (SEDs). The user can select the SED family (e.g. Kurucz) and choose the behavior of each parameter (e.g. Teff) to be fixed, constrained to a given range, or unconstrained. The code calculates the likelihood for the full specified parameter ranges, thus allowing for the identification of multiple solutions and the evaluation of the full correlation matrix for the derived parameters of a single solution.

[ascl:1209.005] HARM: A Numerical Scheme for General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics

HARM uses a conservative, shock-capturing scheme for evolving the equations of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics. The fluxes are calculated using the Harten, Lax, & van Leer scheme. A variant of constrained transport, proposed earlier by Tóth, is used to maintain a divergence-free magnetic field. Only the covariant form of the metric in a coordinate basis is required to specify the geometry. On smooth flows HARM converges at second order.

[ascl:1209.006] macula: Rotational modulations in the photometry of spotted stars

Photometric rotational modulations due to starspots remain the most common and accessible way to study stellar activity. Modelling rotational modulations allows one to invert the observations into several basic parameters, such as the rotation period, spot coverage, stellar inclination and differential rotation rate. The most widely used analytic model for this inversion comes from Budding (1977) and Dorren (1987), who considered circular, grey starspots for a linearly limb darkened star. That model is extended to be more suitable in the analysis of high precision photometry such as that by Kepler. Macula, a Fortran 90 code, provides several improvements, such as non-linear limb darkening of the star and spot, a single-domain analytic function, partial derivatives for all input parameters, temporal partial derivatives, diluted light compensation, instrumental offset normalisations, differential rotation, starspot evolution and predictions of transit depth variations due to unocculted spots. The inclusion of non-linear limb darkening means macula has a maximum photometric error an order-of-magnitude less than that of Dorren (1987) for Sun-like stars observed in the Kepler-bandpass. The code executes three orders-of-magnitude faster than comparable numerical codes making it well-suited for inference problems.

[ascl:1209.007] TMCalc: Fast estimation of stellar metallicity [Fe/H]

TMCalc is a C code developed as an extension to ARES. Using the line list given, the code can be used as a precise and fast indicator of the spectroscopic temperature and metallicity for dwarf FKG stars with effective temperatures ranging from 4500 K to 6500 K and with [Fe/H] ranging from -0.8 dex to 0.4 dex.

[ascl:1209.008] Phantom-GRAPE: SIMD accelerated numerical library for N-body simulations

Phantom-GRAPE is a numerical software library to accelerate collisionless $N$-body simulation with SIMD instruction set on x86 architecture. The Newton's forces and also central forces with an arbitrary shape f(r), which have a finite cutoff radius r_cut (i.e. f(r)=0 at r>r_cut), can be quickly computed.

[ascl:1209.009] ANNz: Artificial Neural Networks for estimating photometric redshifts

ANNz is a freely available software package for photometric redshift estimation using Artificial Neural Networks. ANNz learns the relation between photometry and redshift from an appropriate training set of galaxies for which the redshift is already known. Where a large and representative training set is available, ANNz is a highly competitive tool when compared with traditional template-fitting methods.

For a newer implementation of this package, please see ANNz2 (ascl:1910.014).

[ascl:1209.010] MeqTrees: Software package for implementing Measurement Equations

MeqTrees is a software package for implementing Measurement Equations. This makes it uniquely suited for simulation and calibration of radioastronomical data, especially that involving new radiotelescopes and observational regimes. MeqTrees is implemented as a Python-based front-end called the meqbrowser, and an efficient (C++-based) computational back-end called the meqserver. Numerical models are defined on the front-end via a Python-based Tree Definition Language (TDL), then rapidly executed on the back-end. The use of TDL facilitates an extremely short turn-around time for experimentation with new ideas. This is also helped by unprecedented visualization capabilities for all final and intermediate results. A flexible data model and a number of important optimizations in the back-end ensures that the numerical performance is comparable to that of hand-written code.

MeqTrees includes a highly capable FITS viewer and sky model manager called Tigger, which can also work as a standalone tool.

[ascl:1209.011] DiskFit: Modeling Asymmetries in Disk Galaxies

DiskFit implements procedures for fitting non-axisymmetries in either kinematic or photometric data. DiskFit can analyze H-alpha and CO velocity field data as well as HI kinematics to search for non-circular motions in the disk galaxies. DiskFit can also be used to constrain photometric models of the disc, bar and bulge. It deprecates an earlier version, by a subset of these authors, called velfit.

[ascl:1209.012] Scanamorphos: Maps from scan observations made with bolometer arrays

Scanamorphos is an IDL program to build maps from scan observations made with bolometer arrays. Scanamorphos can post-process scan observations performed with the Herschel photometer arrays. This post-processing mainly consists in subtracting the total low-frequency noise (both its thermal and non-thermal components), masking cosmic ray hit residuals, and projecting the data onto a map. Although it was developed for Herschel, it is also applicable with minimal adjustment to scan observations made with other bolometer arrays provided they entail sufficient redundancy; it was successfully applied to P-Artemis, an instrument operating on the APEX telescope. Scanamorphos does not assume any particular noise model and does not apply any Fourier-space filtering to the data. It is an empirical tool using only the redundancy built in the observations, taking advantage of the fact that each portion of the sky is sampled at multiple times by multiple bolometers. The user is allowed to optionally visualize and control results at each intermediate step, but the processing is fully automated.

[ascl:1209.013] IRACproc: IRAC Post-BCD Processing

IRACproc is a software suite that facilitates the co-addition of dithered or mapped Spitzer/IRAC data to make them ready for further analysis with application to a wide variety of IRAC observing programs. The software runs within PDL, a numeric extension for Perl available from pdl.perl.org, and as stand alone perl scripts. In acting as a wrapper for the Spitzer Science Center's MOPEX software, IRACproc improves the rejection of cosmic rays and other transients in the co-added data. In addition, IRACproc performs (optional) Point Spread Function (PSF) fitting, subtraction, and masking of saturated stars.

[ascl:1209.014] FAMIAS: Frequency Analysis and Mode Identification for AsteroSeismology

FAMIAS (Frequency Analysis and Mode Identification for Asteroseismology) is a package of software tools programmed in C++ for the analysis of photometric and spectroscopic time-series data. FAMIAS provides analysis tools that are required for the steps between the data reduction and the seismic modeling. Two main sets of tools are incorporated in FAMIAS. The first set permits to search for periodicities in the data using Fourier and non-linear least-squares fitting techniques. The other set permits to carry out a mode identification for the detected pulsation frequencies to determine their harmonic degree l, and azimuthal order m. FAMIAS is applicable to main-sequence pulsators hotter than the Sun. This includes Gamma Dor, Delta Sct stars, slowly pulsating B (SPB)-stars and Beta Cep stars - basically all stars for which empirical mode identification is required to successfully carry out asteroseismology.

[ascl:1209.015] Aspects: Probabilistic/positional association of catalogs of sources

Given two catalogs K and K' of n and n' astrophysical sources, respectively, Aspects (Association positionnelle/probabiliste de catalogues de sources) computes, for any objects MiK and M'jK', the probability that M'j is a counterpart of Mi, i.e. that they are the same source. To determine this probability of association, the code takes into account the coordinates and the positional uncertainties of all the objects. Aspects also computes the probability P(Ai, 0 | C ∩ C') that Mi has no counterpart.

Aspects is written in Fortran 95; the required Fortran 90 Numerical Recipes routines used in version 1.0 have been replaced with free equivalents in version 2.0.

[ascl:1208.001] Astrometry.net: Astrometric calibration of images

Astrometry.net is a reliable and robust system that takes as input an astronomical image and returns as output the pointing, scale, and orientation of that image (the astrometric calibration or World Coordinate System information). The system requires no first guess, and works with the information in the image pixels alone; that is, the problem is a generalization of the "lost in space" problem in which nothing—not even the image scale—is known. After robust source detection is performed in the input image, asterisms (sets of four or five stars) are geometrically hashed and compared to pre-indexed hashes to generate hypotheses about the astrometric calibration. A hypothesis is only accepted as true if it passes a Bayesian decision theory test against a null hypothesis. With indices built from the USNO-B catalog and designed for uniformity of coverage and redundancy, the success rate is >99.9% for contemporary near-ultraviolet and visual imaging survey data, with no false positives. The failure rate is consistent with the incompleteness of the USNO-B catalog; augmentation with indices built from the Two Micron All Sky Survey catalog brings the completeness to 100% with no false positives. We are using this system to generate consistent and standards-compliant meta-data for digital and digitized imaging from plate repositories, automated observatories, individual scientific investigators, and hobbyists.

[ascl:1208.002] BINSYN: Simulating Spectra and Light Curves of Binary Systems with or without Accretion Disks

The BINSYN program suite is a collection of programs for analysis of binary star systems with or without an optically thick accretion disk. BINSYN produces synthetic spectra of individual binary star components plus a synthetic spectrum of the system. If the system includes an accretion disk, BINSYN also produces a separate synthetic spectrum of the disk face and rim. A system routine convolves the synthetic spectra with filter profiles of several photometric standards to produce absolute synthetic photometry output. The package generates synthetic light curves and determines an optimized solution for system parameters.

[ascl:1208.003] APT: Aperture Photometry Tool

Aperture Photometry Tool (APT) is software for astronomers and students interested in manually exploring the photometric qualities of astronomical images. It has a graphical user interface (GUI) which allows the image data associated with aperture photometry calculations for point and extended sources to be visualized and, therefore, more effectively analyzed. Mouse-clicking on a source in the displayed image draws a circular or elliptical aperture and sky annulus around the source and computes the source intensity and its uncertainty, along with several commonly used measures of the local sky background and its variability. The results are displayed and can be optionally saved to an aperture-photometry-table file and plotted on graphs in various ways using functions available in the software. APT is geared toward processing sources in a small number of images and is not suitable for bulk processing a large number of images, unlike other aperture photometry packages (e.g., SExtractor). However, APT does have a convenient source-list tool that enables calculations for a large number of detections in a given image. The source-list tool can be run either in automatic mode to generate an aperture photometry table quickly or in manual mode to permit inspection and adjustment of the calculation for each individual detection. APT displays a variety of useful graphs, including image histogram, and aperture slices, source scatter plot, sky scatter plot, sky histogram, radial profile, curve of growth, and aperture-photometry-table scatter plots and histograms. APT has functions for customizing calculations, including outlier rejection, pixel “picking” and “zapping,” and a selection of source and sky models. The radial-profile-interpolation source model, accessed via the radial-profile-plot panel, allows recovery of source intensity from pixels with missing data and can be especially beneficial in crowded fields.

[ascl:1208.004] PyKE: Reduction and analysis of Kepler Simple Aperture Photometry data

PyKE is a python-based PyRAF package that can also be run as a stand-alone program within a unix-based shell without compiling against PyRAF. It is a group of tasks developed for the reduction and analysis of Kepler Simple Aperture Photometry (SAP) data of individual targets with individual characteristics. The main purposes of these tasks are to i) re-extract light curves from manually-chosen pixel apertures and ii) cotrend and/or detrend the data in order to reduce or remove systematic noise structure using methods tunable to user and target-specific requirements. PyKE is an open source project and contributions of new tasks or enhanced functionality of existing tasks by the community are welcome.

[ascl:1208.005] PSM: Planck Sky Model

The Planck Sky Model (PSM) is a global representation of the multi-component sky at frequencies ranging from a few GHz to a few THz. It summarizes in a synthetic way as much of our present knowledge as possible of the GHz sky. PSM is a complete and versatile set of programs and data that can be used for the simulation or the prediction of sky emission in the frequency range of typical CMB experiments, and in particular of the Planck sky mission. It was originally developed as part of the activities of Planck component separation Working Group (or "Working Group 2" - WG2), and of the ADAMIS team at APC.

PSM gives users the opportunity to investigate the model in some depth: look at its parameters, visualize its predictions for all individual components in various formats, simulate sky emission compatible with a given parameter set, and observe the modeled sky with a synthetic instrument. In particular, it makes possible the simulation of sky emission maps as could be plausibly observed by Planck or other CMB experiments that can be used as inputs for the development and testing of data processing and analysis techniques.

[ascl:1208.006] ccogs: Cosmological Calculations on the GPU

This suite contains two packages for computing cosmological quantities on the GPU: aperture_mass, which calculates the aperture mass map for a given dataset using the filter proposed by Schirmer et al (2007) (an NFW profile with exponential cut-offs at zero and large radii), and angular_correlation, which calculates the 2-pt angular correlation function using data and a flat distribution of randomly generated galaxies. A particular estimator is chosen, but the user has the flexibility to explore other estimators.

[ascl:1208.007] Big MACS: Accurate photometric calibration

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.

[ascl:1208.008] TiRiFiC: Tilted Ring Fitting Code

Tilted Ring Fitting Code (TiRiFiC) is a prototype computer program to construct simulated (high-resolution) astronomical spectroscopic 3d-observations (data cubes) of simple kinematical and morphological models of rotating (galactic) disks. It is possible to automatically optimize the parameterizations of constructed model disks to fit spectroscopic (3d-) observations via a χ2 minimization. TiRiFiC is currently implemented as an add-on to the Groningen Image Processing System (GIPSY) software package and attempts to provide a method to automatically fit an extended tilted-ring model directly to a data cube.

[ascl:1208.009] BLOBCAT: Software to Catalog Blobs

BLOBCAT is a source extraction software that utilizes the flood fill algorithm to detect and catalog blobs, or islands of pixels representing sources, in 2D astronomical images. The software is designed to process radio-wavelength images of both Stokes I intensity and linear polarization, the latter formed through the quadrature sum of Stokes Q and U intensities or as a by-product of rotation measure synthesis. BLOBCAT corrects for two systematic biases to enable the flood fill algorithm to accurately measure flux densities for Gaussian sources. BLOBCAT exhibits accurate measurement performance in total intensity and, in particular, linear polarization, and is particularly suited to the analysis of large survey data.

[ascl:1208.010] BASE: Bayesian Astrometric and Spectroscopic Exoplanet Detection and Characterization Tool

BASE is a novel program for the combined or separate Bayesian analysis of astrometric and radial-velocity measurements of potential exoplanet hosts and binary stars. The tool fulfills two major tasks of exoplanet science, namely the detection of exoplanets and the characterization of their orbits. BASE was developed to provide the possibility of an integrated Bayesian analysis of stellar astrometric and Doppler-spectroscopic measurements with respect to their binary or planetary companions’ signals, correctly treating the astrometric measurement uncertainties and allowing to explore the whole parameter space without the need for informative prior constraints. The tool automatically diagnoses convergence of its Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC[2]) sampler to the posterior and regularly outputs status information. For orbit characterization, BASE delivers important results such as the probability densities and correlations of model parameters and derived quantities. BASE is a highly configurable command-line tool developed in Fortran 2008 and compiled with GFortran. Options can be used to control the program’s behaviour and supply information such as the stellar mass or prior information. Any option can be supplied in a configuration file and/or on the command line.

[ascl:1208.011] Fewbody: Numerical toolkit for simulating small-N gravitational dynamics

Fewbody is a numerical toolkit for simulating small-N gravitational dynamics. It is a general N-body dynamics code, although it was written for the purpose of performing scattering experiments, and therefore has several features that make it well-suited for this purpose. Fewbody uses the 8th-order Runge-Kutta Prince-Dormand integration method with 9th-order error estimate and adaptive timestep to advance the N-body system forward in time. It integrates the usual formulation of the N-body equations in configuration space, but allows for the option of global pairwise Kustaanheimo-Stiefel (K-S) regularization (Heggie 1974; Mikkola 1985). The code uses a binary tree algorithm to classify the N-body system into a set of independently bound hierarchies, and performs collisions between stars in the “sticky star” approximation. Fewbody contains a collection of command line utilities that can be used to perform individual scattering and N-body interactions, but is more generally a library of functions that can be used from within other codes.

[ascl:1208.012] Swarm-NG: Parallel n-body Integrations

Swarm-NG is a C++ library for the efficient direct integration of many n-body systems using highly-parallel Graphics Processing Units (GPU). Swarm-NG focuses on many few-body systems, e.g., thousands of systems with 3...15 bodies each, as is typical for the study of planetary systems; the code parallelizes the simulation, including both the numerical integration of the equations of motion and the evaluation of forces using NVIDIA's "Compute Unified Device Architecture" (CUDA) on the GPU. Swarm-NG includes optimized implementations of 4th order time-symmetrized Hermite integration and mixed variable symplectic integration as well as several sample codes for other algorithms to illustrate how non-CUDA-savvy users may themselves introduce customized integrators into the Swarm-NG framework. Applications of Swarm-NG include studying the late stages of planet formation, testing the stability of planetary systems and evaluating the goodness-of-fit between many planetary system models and observations of extrasolar planet host stars (e.g., radial velocity, astrometry, transit timing). While Swarm-NG focuses on the parallel integration of many planetary systems,the underlying integrators could be applied to a wide variety of problems that require repeatedly integrating a set of ordinary differential equations many times using different initial conditions and/or parameter values.

[ascl:1208.013] SolarSoft: Programming and data analysis environment for solar physics

SolarSoft is a set of integrated software libraries, data bases, and system utilities which provide a common programming and data analysis environment for Solar Physics. The SolarSoftWare (SSW) system is built from Yohkoh, SOHO, SDAC and Astronomy libraries and draws upon contributions from many members of those projects. It is primarily an IDL based system, although some instrument teams integrate executables written in other languages. The SSW environment provides a consistent look and feel at widely distributed co-investigator institutions to facilitate data exchange and to stimulate coordinated analysis. Commonalities and overlap in solar data and analysis goals are exploited to permit application of fundamental utilities to the data from many different solar instruments. The use of common libraries, utilities, techniques and interfaces minimizes the learning curve for investigators who are analyzing new solar data sets, correlating results from multiple experiments or performing research away from their home institution.

[ascl:1208.014] MPI-AMRVAC: MPI-Adaptive Mesh Refinement-Versatile Advection Code

MPI-AMRVAC is an MPI-parallelized Adaptive Mesh Refinement code, with some heritage (in the solver part) to the Versatile Advection Code or VAC, initiated by Gábor Tóth at the Astronomical Institute at Utrecht in November 1994, with help from Rony Keppens since 1996. Previous incarnations of the Adaptive Mesh Refinement version of VAC were of restricted use only, and have been used for basic research in AMR strategies, or for well-targeted applications. This MPI version uses a full octree block-based approach, and allows for general orthogonal coordinate systems. MPI-AMRVAC aims to advance any system of (primarily hyperbolic) partial differential equations by a number of different numerical schemes. The emphasis is on (near) conservation laws, with shock-dominated problems as a main research target. The actual equations are stored in separate modules, can be added if needed, and they can be selected by a simple configuration of the VACPP preprocessor. The dimensionality of the problem is also set through VACPP. The numerical schemes are able to handle discontinuities and smooth flows as well.

[ascl:1208.015] Lare3d: Lagrangian-Eulerian remap scheme for MHD

Lare3d is a Lagrangian-remap code for solving the non-linear MHD equations in three spatial dimensions.

[ascl:1208.016] VARTOOLS: Light Curve Analysis Program

The VARTOOLS program is a command line utility that provides tools for analyzing time series astronomical data. It implements a number of routines for calculating variability/periodicity statistics of light curves, as well as tools for modifying and filtering light curves.

[ascl:1208.017] APLpy: Astronomical Plotting Library in Python

APLpy (the Astronomical Plotting Library in Python) is a Python module for producing publication-quality plots of astronomical imaging data in FITS format. The module uses Matplotlib, a powerful and interactive plotting package. It is capable of creating output files in several graphical formats, including EPS, PDF, PS, PNG, and SVG. Plots can be made interactively or by using scripts, and can generate co-aligned FITS cubes to make three-color RGB images. It also offers different overlay capabilities, including contour sets, markers with customizable symbols, and coordinate grids, and a range of other useful features.

[ascl:1208.018] CUBEP3M: High performance P3M N-body code

CUBEP3M is a high performance cosmological N-body code which has many utilities and extensions, including a runtime halo finder, a non-Gaussian initial conditions generator, a tuneable accuracy, and a system of unique particle identification. CUBEP3M is fast, has a memory imprint up to three times lower than other widely used N-body codes, and has been run on up to 20,000 cores, achieving close to ideal weak scaling even at this problem size. It is well suited and has already been used for a broad number of science applications that require either large samples of non-linear realizations or very large dark matter N-body simulations, including cosmological reionization, baryonic acoustic oscillations, weak lensing or non-Gaussian statistics.

[ascl:1208.019] MPFIT: Robust non-linear least squares curve fitting

These IDL routines provide a robust and relatively fast way to perform least-squares curve and surface fitting. The algorithms are translated from MINPACK-1, which is a rugged minimization routine found on Netlib, and distributed with permission. This algorithm is more desirable than CURVEFIT because it is generally more stable and less likely to crash than the brute-force approach taken by CURVEFIT, which is based upon Numerical Recipes.

[ascl:1208.020] ParselTongue: AIPS Python Interface

ParselTongue is a Python interface to classic AIPS, Obit and possibly other task-based data reduction packages. It serves as the software infrastructure for some of the ALBUS implementation. It allows you to run AIPS tasks, and access AIPS headers and extension tables from Python. There is also support for running Obit tasks and accessing data in FITS files. Full access to the visibilities in AIPS UV data is also available.

[ascl:1208.021] EzGal: A Flexible Interface for Stellar Population Synthesis Models

EzGal is a flexible Python program which generates observable parameters (magnitudes, colors, and mass-to-light ratios) for arbitrary input stellar population synthesis (SPS) models; it enables simple, direct comparison of different model sets so that the uncertainty introduced by choice of model set can be quantified. EzGal is also capable of generating composite stellar population models (CSPs) for arbitrary input star-formation histories and reddening laws, and can be used to interpolate between metallicities for a given model set.

[ascl:1207.001] EXOFAST: Fast transit and/or RV fitter for single exoplanet

EXOFAST is a fast, robust suite of routines written in IDL which is designed to fit exoplanetary transits and radial velocity variations simultaneously or separately, and characterize the parameter uncertainties and covariances with a Differential Evolution Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. Our code self-consistently incorporates both data sets to simultaneously derive stellar parameters along with the transit and RV parameters, resulting in consistent, but tighter constraints on an example fit of the discovery data of HAT-P-3b that is well-mixed in under two minutes on a standard desktop computer. EXOFAST has an easy-to-use online interface for several basic features of our transit and radial velocity fitting. A more robust version of EXOFAST, EXOFASTv2 (ascl:1710.003), is also available.

[ascl:1207.002] HiGPUs: Hermite's N-body integrator running on Graphic Processing Units

HiGPUs is an implementation of the numerical integration of the classical, gravitational, N-body problem, based on a 6th order Hermite’s integration scheme with block time steps, with a direct evaluation of the particle-particle forces. The main innovation of this code is its full parallelization, exploiting both OpenMP and MPI in the use of the multicore Central Processing Units as well as either Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) or OpenCL for the hosted Graphic Processing Units. We tested both performance and accuracy of the code using up to 256 GPUs in the supercomputer IBM iDataPlex DX360M3 Linux Infiniband Cluster provided by the italian supercomputing consortium CINECA, for values of N ≤ 8 millions. We were able to follow the evolution of a system of 8 million bodies for few crossing times, task previously unreached by direct summation codes.

HiGPUs is also available as part of the AMUSE project.

[ascl:1207.003] VAC: Versatile Advection Code

The Versatile Advection Code (VAC) is a freely available general hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic simulation software that works in 1, 2 or 3 dimensions on Cartesian and logically Cartesian grids. VAC runs on any Unix/Linux system with a Fortran 90 (or 77) compiler and Perl interpreter. VAC can run on parallel machines using either the Message Passing Interface (MPI) library or a High Performance Fortran (HPF) compiler.

Would you like to view a random code?