ASCL News
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ExoVis, the winner of the 2013 Open Exoplanet Catalogue visualization contest, is an exosystem visualizer programmed by Tom Hands, a PdD student at the University of Leicester. It's quite elegant. ExoVis has been added to our list of Web Resources and Tools.
Streams Going Notts: The tidal debris finder comparison project popped up on arXiv recently. This paper, which has been added to our thread for papers of possible interest, discusses testing four codes, S-Tracker, VELOCIraptor (formerly known as the STructure Finder, STF), ROCKSTAR, and HOT6D, to determine how well they find tidal debris in a fully cosmological Milky Way type simulation. The paper compares the algorithms used by the codes and quantifies the findings.
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Twenty-one codes were added to the ASCL in April:
Astropy: Community Python library for astronomy
Copter: Cosmological perturbation theory
CosmicEmuLog: Cosmological Power Spectra Emulator
CosmoRec: Cosmological Recombination code
DESPOTIC: Derive the Energetics and SPectra of Optically Thick Interstellar CloudsDiffusion.f: Diffusion of elements in stars
GALSVM: Automated Morphology Classification
IFrIT: Ionization FRont Interactive Tool
MPgrafic: A parallel MPI version of Grafic-1
ORIGAMI: Structure-finding routine in N-body simulationPEC: Period Error Calculator
pyCloudy: Tools to manage astronomical Cloudy photoionization code
PyNeb: Analysis of emission lines
Qhull: Quickhull algorithm for computing the convex hull
Sérsic: Exact deprojection of Sérsic surface brightness profilesSFH: Star Formation History
SZpack: Computation of Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) signals
TPZ: Trees for Photo-Z
TVD: Total Variation Diminishing code
VOBOZ/ZOBOV: Halo-finding and Void-finding algorithms -
Thirty codes were added to the ASCL in March:
2MASS Kit: 2MASS Catalog Server Kit
ACORNS-ADI: Algorithms for Calibration, Optimized Registration and Nulling the Star in Angular Differential Imaging
ATLAS12: Opacity sampling model atmosphere program
BSE: Binary Star Evolution
CADRE: CArma Data REduction pipelineCosmoHammer: Cosmological parameter estimation with the MCMC Hammer
DPUSER: Interactive language for image analysis
emcee: The MCMC Hammer
Galactus: Modeling and fitting of galaxies from neutral hydrogen (HI) cubes
GaPP: Gaussian Processes in PythonGBTIDL: Reduction and Analysis of GBT Spectral Line Data
Ginga: Flexible FITS viewer
idistort: CMB spectral distortions templates and code
ionFR: Ionospheric Faraday rotation
iSAP: Interactive Sparse Astronomical Data Analysis PackagesMAGIX: Modeling and Analysis Generic Interface for eXternal numerical codes
micrOMEGAs: Calculation of dark matter properties
MOPSIC: Extended Version of MOPSI
pysynphot: Synthetic photometry software package
SMMOL: Spherical Multi-level MOLecular line radiative transferSSE: Single Star Evolution
Stellarics: Inverse Compton scattering from stellar heliospheres
Sunrise: Radiation transfer through interstellar dust
SWIFT: A solar system integration software package
TAC-maker: Transit Analytical Curve makerTGCat: Chandra Transmission Grating Catalog and Archive
TYCHO: Stellar evolution code
UCL_CHEM: time and depth dependent gas-grain chemical model
UCL_PDR: Time dependent photon-dissociation regions model
Xmatch: GPU Enhanced Astronomic Catalog Cross-Matching -
As those familiar with the ASCL know, those working on it take an active approach to sharing astrophysical source code, ferreting out codes, looking for their download sites, and creating entries for them in the ASCL. We welcome and indeed (enthusiastically!) encourage code authors to create entries for their codes, but most of the indexing of codes is currently done by ASCL associate editor Kim DuPrie and me.
I regularly read through pre-prints looking for mention of codes not yet indexed by the ASCL; Advisory Committee Chairman Peter Teuben does the same. He has access to publications I cannot get to, such as MNRAS, and looks there for codes as well. A paper may yield a code new to the ASCL, and sometimes, a paper will reveal what Peter and I refer to as Russian dolls: the deeper we get into a paper, the more codes it reveals. One paper he sent to me recently revealed 37 (!) codes, only 5 of which the ASCL had indexed. Thirty-two new codes to try to find!
Other times, a paper will mention two or three or more codes which lead us to other papers which mention yet more codes, which lead us to papers which mention even more codes... and though the ASCL indexes over 600 codes, there are still hundreds, probably thousands, out there it hasn't indexed, so some of these more more MORE codes that we come across also need to be found. Like Russian nesting dolls, the codes go on and on and on.It's times like that -- finding 32 new codes in just one paper! peeling back layers and layers of new codes! -- I wish I could work on the ASCL full-time. Well, also the times I look at the list we'd already compiled (a list I stopped adding to over a year ago) of ~ 200 codes to find. Also the times I look at the list of things still to be done for/on/about the ASCL beyond indexing new codes.
So many codes, so little time to spend on them, alas!
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Idly browsing through Google Analytics statistics on the ASCL, I pulled out pageviews by country, these just of the ASCL forum on Asterisk for this month so far. Of the 4,843 pageviews, 1,939 (40%) are from the US, which means of course that 60% are not. People from eighty-three countries have accessed the code entries forum; I've tagged the pie slices below of the ten countries with at least 2% of the total pageviews. Click on the pie to see the chart at full size.
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Yay!
That is all.
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Advisory Committee member Bruce Berriman has a nice post about the ASCL on his excellent Astronomy Computing Today blog.
Thanks, Bruce!
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Gyula Józsa has been updating TiRiFiC and fixing minor bugs, and has added features and made the code standalone software, no longer requiring GIPSY; instead, input files are in FITS format now. You can be alerted to updates by subscribing to the TiRiFiC thread on the ASCL.
Peter Teuben reported on the ASCL that an updated version of ZEUS-MP (V1.5) has been made public by the U.Maryland group. Please find the updated version here: http://www.netpurgatory.com/zeusmp.html
He also provided an additional download site for new code GRID-core.
If you would like to receive an email whenever a new post is made on the ASCL forum which houses the code entries, instructions for subscribing to the forum are available.
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Seventeen codes were added to the ASCL in February:
ACS: ALMA Common Software
DisPerSE: Discrete Persistent Structures Extractor
EPICS: Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System
ESO-MIDAS: General tools for image processing and data reduction
FASTPHOT: A simple and quick IDL PSF-fitting routineGALA: Stellar atmospheric parameters and chemical abundances
GRID-core: Gravitational Potential Identification of Cores
IAS Stacking Library in IDL
ICORE: Image Co-addition with Optional Resolution Enhancement
ISIS: Interactive Spectral Interpretation System for High Resolution X-Ray SpectroscopyMARX: Model of AXAF Response to X-rays
ME(SSY)**2: Monte Carlo Code for Star Cluster Simulations
Minerva: Cylindrical coordinate extension for Athena
NIFTY: A versatile Python library for signal inference
pNbody: A python parallelized N-body reduction toolboxSYNMAG Photometry: Catalog-level Matched Colors of Extended Sources
XDQSO: Photometic quasar probabilities and redshiftsWe also added CSCview: A Graphical User Interface to the Chandra Source Catalog to our web tools page, and pyro: hydro by example — A simple python-based tutorial on computational methods for hydrodynamics to our list of online resources. As of February 28, there were 585 codes in the ASCL.
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The ASCL has a new home page! ascl.net continues to be the permalink but now redirects to the index page of this site, which provides easy navigation and access to information. Code entries remain on the Asterisk phpbb, which offers full-text searching capability and subscription service.
Suggestions for improving the resource are always welcome! They can be made here or emailed to editor@ascl.net.
