[Yt-dev] Star Spectrum Code

[Stephen Skory]

Hi all,

I've added code to yt.extensions.StarAnalysis (in hg, of course) to calculate the spectral flux and spectral energy distribution for a collection of stars. This is based on code from Ken Nagamine, and it uses the data tables provided by Bruzual & Charlot. You can pass it a data_source, or arrays containing the pertinent information (star mass, creation time and metallicity) and it will build you a spectrum.

The rub is in the B&C data tables. They are distributed as ASCII files from an unreliable foreign server. The data required to build a spectrum is at least 150MB in ASCII format and takes a looong time to download. And then once you have it, reading ASCII data in is super sloooow. I have converted the data to HDF5 files which are nice and fast and only 72MB in size in total. However, I'm not sure exactly if we can distribute them as HDF5 files. I am going to email B&C and ask them if we can, with proper acknowledgement, of course. Otherwise, I'll have to include my (currently ridiculously slow) conversion script with any instructions on how to use the spectrum code.

I'll let you guys know!
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sskory at physics.ucsd.edu           o__  Stephen Skory
http://physics.ucsd.edu/~sskory/ _.>/ _Graduate Student
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