[yt-users] Surface density SFR?

[Stephen Skory]

Hi Fernando,

> I'm working on star formation analysis using StarFormationRate() module with Enzo datasets.
> Is there an easy way to add surface density SFR as a column in the output file? That'd be really helpful when doing analysis related to KS law.

It would not be difficult technically, but it would be confusing to do
it in a way that made things any easier for the user. What I mean is
that the star formation rate is calculated inside of some yt data
container: a sphere, a region, etc... For a sphere, the surface area
you would divide by is easy because it's fully symmetric, but if you
have a non-symmetric parallelepiped region, which surface area do you
choose? This means that the user would have to supply a dimension or
surface area value by hand, and at this point it's just as simple (I
think) to divide out the surface area later.

By the way, it's possible to access the contents of the text file
without re-reading them off disk. They are stored as arrays that hang
off of the 'sfr' object. Look at the bottom of the SFR section of the
docs:

http://yt-project.org/doc/analysis_modules/star_analysis.html#star-formation-rate

you will probably have to scroll down, it's just above the "Synthetic
Spectrum Generator" section.

Good luck!

-- 
Stephen Skory
s at skory.us
http://stephenskory.com/
510.621.3687 (google voice)