Several of the ASCL's Advisory Committee are panelists for a Birds of a Feather session that seeks answers to the following questions:
How do we ensure code release is recognized as an essential part of assuring reproducibility of research?
How can the community change the culture so developers will release their programs?
What can we do to ensure code authors receive credit for writing and releasing their software, and encourage them to release it even if it's "messy" code?
How do we reduce expectations of support when a developer does not wish to (or cannot) take on that role after program release?
What role might journal publishers and funding agencies have in furthering code release, and how can the community influence them to take on that role?
How can universities be convinced to change policies which prohibit software publication?
Can funding agencies and publishers encourage documentation of programs, and if so, how?
Got answers? Ideas? Comments? Please share!
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
Best Practices for Scientific Computing. What can I say? Good reading! Please don't let not following its recommendations stop you from making your code(s) public or from submitting it/them to the ASCL, however. Offer them up with the CRAPL license; make your codes available no matter how messy they are. After all, Astronomical Software Wants To Be Free. And really, science requires it.
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]
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.
Twenty-five codes were added to the ASCL in August; we ended the month with 500 codes.
APLpy: Astronomical Plotting Library in Python
APT: Aperture Photometry Tool
Astrometry.net: Astrometric calibration of images
BASE: Bayesian Astrometric and Spectroscopic Exoplanet Detection and Characterization Tool
Big MACS: Accurate photometric calibration
BINSYN: Simulating Spectra and Light Curves of Binary Systems with or without Accretion Disks
BLOBCAT: Software to Catalog Blobs
BLOCK: A Bayesian block method to analyze structure in photon counting data
BSGMODEL: The Bahcall-Soneira Galaxy Model
ccogs: Cosmological Calculations on the GPU
CUBEP3M: High performance P3M N-body code
EXTINCT: A computerized model of large-scale visual interstellar extinction
EzGal: A Flexible Interface for Stellar Population Synthesis Models
Fewbody: Numerical toolkit for simulating small-N gravitational dynamics
Lare3d: Lagrangian-Eulerian remap scheme for MHD
MPFIT: Robust non-linear least squares curve fitting
MPI-AMRVAC: MPI-Adaptive Mesh Refinement-Versatile Advection Code
ParselTongue: AIPS Python Interface
PSM: Planck Sky Model
PyKE: Reduction and analysis of Kepler Simple Aperture Photometry data
RADPACK: A RADical compression analysis PACKage for fitting to the CMB
SolarSoft: Programming and data analysis environment for solar physics
Swarm-NG: Parallel n-body Integrations
TiRiFiC: Tilted Ring Fitting Code
VARTOOLS: Light Curve Analysis Program
Sometimes the codes are easy to find, sometimes they are not. August was a good month. The last of the old codes have been moved over from the old site, associate editor Kim and I had a surprisingly easy time finding codes, and we even had a couple or three codes submitted by their authors. This boosted the ASCL to 500 codes.
Got codes? We want 'em; please share! Submit right on the ASCL itself. Know of a code we don't have? Please suggest it for inclusion. Just post a reply with any information you have on it. Thanks!
Fourteen codes were added to the ASCL in July; there are now 475 codes in the library.
Astropysics: Astrophysics utilities for python
dcr: Cosmic Ray Removal
EXOFAST: Fast transit and/or RV fitter for single exoplanet
HiGPUs: Hermite's N-body integrator running on Graphic Processing Units
Hyperion: Parallelized 3D Dust Continuum Radiative Transfer Code
JKTEBOP: Analyzing light curves of detached eclipsing binaries
L.A.Cosmic: Laplacian Cosmic Ray Identification
PCA: Principal Component Analysis for spectra modeling
PyFITS: Python FITS Module
PyRAF: Python alternative for IRAF
PySALT: SALT science pipeline
VAC: Versatile Advection Code
wvrgcal: Correction of atmospheric phase fluctuations in ALMA observations
xSonify: Sonification software
Bertrand Plez, developer of the code TurboSpectrum, released a new version of the code yesterday. He maintains a list of code users; please email him to be added to the list.
The ASCL has a thread of web tools and resources for astronomers that we've come across while code-gathering. Sometimes these are web versions of downloadable codes in the ASCL; if a code is available only in a non-downloadable version, essentially acting as a black box, it is listed here, too, rather than given a regular entry.
In June and July, we've added four new web tools to the thread:
PaperScope, a tool for graphically exploring the Astrophysics Data System (ADS). It's useful for identifying the citation/reference relationships between papers, and enables the user to visualize these relationships to make locating papers of interest easier.
SpectroWeb, an online maintained interactive graphical database of digital spectral atlases of spectral standard stars.
StarView, an astronomical database browser and research analysis tool.
Time Utilities, which are online applets that convert a list of UTCs to Barycentric Julian Dates in Barycentric Dynamical Time (BJD_TDB), Barycentric Julian Dates in Barycentric Dynamical Time (BJD_TDB) to Julian Dates in UTC, and Heliocentric Julian Dates to Barycentric Julian Dates.
Have a good resource that should be listed? Please add it to the thread; thanks!