Stellar Kinematics Application

Determining ages for brown dwarfs is one of the trickiest aspects in our research, yet a very important one as they allow us to estimate masses. One way many researchers estimate ages is by attempting to match the motions of the object to that of stellar moving groups with known ages. A match in XYZ-UVW space can suggest membership which would imply the brown dwarf is coeval with that group. One can calculate XYZ positions and UVW velocities in Python or your favorite programming language. BDNYC is now hosting a stellar kinematics web application that can do this for you.

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BDNYC at AAS 225

BDNYC (and friends) are out in force for the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society!

Please come see our posters and talks (mostly on Monday). To whet your appetite, or if you missed them, here are some samplers:

Munazza Alam (Monday, 138.40)
High-Resolution Spectral Analysis of Red & Blue L Dwarfs
AAS225_Munazza_posterSara Camnasio (Monday, 138.39)
Multi-resolution Analysis of Red and Blue L Dwarfs
AAS225_Sara_posterKelle Cruz and Stephanie Douglas (Monday, 138.37)
When good fits go wrong: Untangling Physical Parameters of Warm Brown Dwarfs

AAS225_Stephanie_posterStephanie Douglas (Monday 138.19)
Rotation and Activity in Praesepe and the Hyades

AAS225_Steph_poster2Jackie Faherty (Talk, Monday 130.05)
Clouds in the Coldest Brown Dwarfs

Joe Filippazzo (Monday, 138.34)
Fundamental Parameters for an Age Calibrated Sequence of the Lowest Mass Stars to the Highest Mass Planets
Joe Filippazzo - AAS225

Paige Giorla (Monday, 138.44)
T Dwarf Model Fits for Spectral Standards at Low Spectral Resolution
AAS225_Paige_posterKay Hiranaka (Talk, Monday 130.04D)
Constraining the Properties of the Dust Haze in the Atmospheres of Young Brown Dwarfs

Erini Lambrides (Thursday, 432.02)
Can 3000 IR spectra unveil the connection between AGN and the interstellar medium of their host galaxies?

Emily Rice (Tuesday, 243.02)
STARtorialist: Astronomy Outreach via Fashion, Sci-Fi, & Pop Culture
AAS225_STARtorialistAdric Riedel (Monday, 138.38)
The Young and the Red: What we can learn from Young Brown Dwarfs
AAS225_Adric_poster

Using WriteLaTeX for Collaborative Papers

Update: WriteLaTeX is now Overleaf

We all love Google Docs. It’s a functional and convenient way to share and collaboratively edit documents across platforms, time zones, and even continents. We in the BDNYC group use it extensively.

But what if you want to write a scientific paper? Google Docs, as awesome as it is, is not much more than a word processor. We want the internal hyperlinks for sections, figures, tables, and citations, elegant mathematical formulae, well-formatted tables, more control over where and how our components are arranged – in a word, LaTeX. Yes, LaTeX has its own host of problems, but it’s very good at what it does.

There are a number of collaborative editing projects out there – Authorea springs to mind. But one of the simpler options out there is actually pretty good: WriteLaTeX.
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Using astroquery

If you’re like me, you’ve spent a lot of time downloading a table from VizieR, and then trying to insert it into whatever database or table you are currently using. It’s annoying, particularly because VizieR either won’t output information in a machine-readable format or won’t put an empty line into a massive list of results when there’s no match in the catalog.
Astroquery is better. It’s a python package affiliated with astropy that can grab data from all your favorite catalog servers (Vizier, SIMBAD, IRSA, NED, etc) directly, and use it; combine that with Astropy’s ability (or Python’s capacity) to print out tables to files, and it’s a lot easier to write a script to do it all for you.

Astroquery is in the Python Package Index, so you can install and update it with
pip install astroquery

You also need the ‘requests’ module to do the web-interfacing (and Astropy v3); it’s available on the Python Package Index and comes preloaded in Anaconda. Using it is simple (this part is almost entirely taken from their pages on using VizieR and IRSA):
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Converting Between Decimal Degrees and Hours, Minutes, Seconds

Here’s a quick Python snippet I wrote to convert right ascension in decimal degrees to hours, minutes, seconds and declination to (+/-)degrees, minutes, seconds.

def deg2HMS(ra='', dec='', round=False):
  RA, DEC, rs, ds = '', '', '', ''
  if dec:
    if str(dec)[0] == '-':
      ds, dec = '-', abs(dec)
    deg = int(dec)
    decM = abs(int((dec-deg)*60))
    if round:
      decS = int((abs((dec-deg)*60)-decM)*60)
    else:
      decS = (abs((dec-deg)*60)-decM)*60
    DEC = '{0}{1} {2} {3}'.format(ds, deg, decM, decS)
  
  if ra:
    if str(ra)[0] == '-':
      rs, ra = '-', abs(ra)
    raH = int(ra/15)
    raM = int(((ra/15)-raH)*60)
    if round:
      raS = int(((((ra/15)-raH)*60)-raM)*60)
    else:
      raS = ((((ra/15)-raH)*60)-raM)*60
    RA = '{0}{1} {2} {3}'.format(rs, raH, raM, raS)
  
  if ra and dec:
    return (RA, DEC)
  else:
    return RA or DEC

For example:
In [1]: f.deg2HMS(ra=66.918277)
Out[1]: '4 27 40.386'

Or even:
In [2]: f.deg2HMS(dec=24.622590)
Out[2]: '+24 37 21.324'

Or if you want to round the seconds, just do:
In [3]: f.deg2HMS(dec=24.622590,round=True)
Out[3]: '+24 37 21'

And to convert hours, minutes and seconds into decimal degrees, we have:

def HMS2deg(ra='', dec=''):
  RA, DEC, rs, ds = '', '', 1, 1
  if dec:
    D, M, S = [float(i) for i in dec.split()]
    if str(D)[0] == '-':
      ds, D = -1, abs(D)
    deg = D + (M/60) + (S/3600)
    DEC = '{0}'.format(deg*ds)
  
  if ra:
    H, M, S = [float(i) for i in ra.split()]
    if str(H)[0] == '-':
      rs, H = -1, abs(H)
    deg = (H*15) + (M/4) + (S/240)
    RA = '{0}'.format(deg*rs)
  
  if ra and dec:
    return (RA, DEC)
  else:
    return RA or DEC

So we can get back our decimal degrees with:

In [4]: f.HMS2deg(ra='4 27 40.386', dec='+24 37 21.324')
Out[4]: (66.918, 24.622)

Editing astrotools

It is important to maintain some standards in astrotools. The goal is to keep it readable and stable. With than in mind, I shall provide some coding guidelines and then describe the structure of astrotools in detail to allow for its easy editing.

Actually, I will let Guido van Rossum (the father of Python) provide you with all the necessary coding guidelines, from naming conventions to code lay-out. You can find them in Guido’s Style Guide for Python Code.

Let me clear out an important aspect about Python modules. A module is a collection of reusable pieces of code, such as functions and classes. A piece of code in a module can use another piece within the same module or in another module, or it can be completely independent. The implications are that you can add a function:

  • that is completely self-contained and that does not interfere with anything else in astrotools
  • that makes use of other astrotools functions/classes
  • that makes use of other Python modules (e.g. numpy), in which case you need a command line to invoke such module (more on this below).

The order of things in astrotools

The module astrotools is broken down into five sections. From top to bottom in the code, they are described below.

I) Documentation: Contains general information about the contents of the module. This type of non-executable text (a.k.a. docstring) must always start and end with three apostrophes (which I like to call Melchior, Caspar, & Balthazar). This tells Python that the stuff within them is a string that can be called by the end user using Python help.

II) External Modules: Contains the Python commands used to invoke external Python modules —the famous “import” commands. Having them all in one location as opposed to inside the functions/classes where they are needed helps to avoid repetition (when more than one function/class needs to invoke the same external module) and to clearly see the external modules needed to use astrotools.

III) Public Functions: Organized alphabetically, these functions are meant to be accessible to end users. These functions have their own docstrings, surrounded by the three apostrophes, just like in Section I.

IV) Non-Public functions: Organized alphabetically, these functions are only used by other functions/classes within astrotools. As such, end users have no business accessing these. Python convention says non-public names should be preceded by double underscore. Technically, anyone can still access them, but Python code of conduct tells end users not to do it. These functions do not need docstrings, only commented (#) intro lines to explain their purpose and where they are used.

V) Public Classes: Organized alphabetically, these classes are meant to be accessible to end users. Just like with Public Functions, Public Classes have their own docstrings.

How to add a function/class to astrotools

  1. Download the latest version of astrotools from the GitHub repository into your computer.
  2. If your function/class needs to import an external module, check if it is already imported in Section II of astrotools. If not, add the command line to do so. Take as much advantage as you can of the modules already imported in astrotools before adding a new one. More external modules needed by astrotools means more requirements that end users will have to meet before having a fully functional astrotools module.
  3. Add your function/class in the appropriate location (alphabetically) within the relevant section (III or V) of astrotools.
  4. Your function/class MUST have a docstring, and it should follow reStructuredText syntax. No panic! It is very simple. For instance, if you want a word in italics, you write: *word*. Consult the reStructuredText User Reference for more information. In terms of format and contents, follow the example of docstrings of existing astrotools functions. Include in the docstring a description of all input parameters in your function/class, including their formats. Remember, the point of documenting your code is to allow others to easily use it and edit it in case you die. This is why I like to call the docstring “the death string”.
  5. If your function/class comes with a sub-function, that is, a side function that you wrote that is used by your main function/class, this means you are a good (object-oriented) programmer! The place to put it is Section IV of astrotools. Include in it intro comments about its purpose and where it is used. If you think that this sub-function could also be useful to end users, by all means add it in Section III instead. Just remember to write a docstring for it.
  6. Test the function/class that you added. Test extreme cases, test wrong input formats, test, test, test!
  7. Update astrotools.py in the GitHub repository with your new edited version.
  8. Inform the person that maintains the public documentation for astrotools so that it gets updated in bdnyc.org/astrotools.

Intro to astrotools

The BDNYC Python module astrotools is now up and running for all to use and edit. This module is intended to be a collection of useful pieces of code for our everyday data handling needs. So far, astrotools is useful to handle fits files and spectral data. Additions to astrotools are welcome.

Let me clear out some relevant Python concepts. A module is simply a set of functional pieces of code. These pieces can be either functions or classes, among other things. A function is a code that executes an action, for example “make me a sandwich”. A class is a code that creates an object with specific characteristics and it allows you to handle this object very effectively. For the example above, you can have a class to create the person that will make the sandwich, a class to create a slice of mortadella, and a class to create mayonnaise. Of course, you can have functions that make no use of classes. More on that in a future post.

Where to find astrotools and how to install it

The module astrotools is available at https://github.com/BDNYC/astrotools as astrotools.py. Make sure that you download it into one of your Python folders in sys.path, which are the folders where Python looks for modules whenever you invoke one in your Python session. If you have no idea what I am referring to, please read this piece of Python documentation.

How to use astrotools

Now you are ready to invoke astrotools into your Python session. Type:

“import astrotools”

That’s it! You are ready to use astrootols functions and classes. For example, if you want to use the function that gets spectral data from a fits file, type:

“x = astrotools.read_spec(filename)”

and x will hold the output of the read_spec function. To learn about the functions and classes in astrotools, visit https://bdnyc.org/astrotools.

By convention, modules are invoked using a nickname, if only to make typing easier. I
suggest the nickname “at”. Then, import astrotools by typing:

“import astrotools as at”

To use it, type:

“x = at.read_spec(filename)”

In later posts I will describe in greater detail some important Python concepts as well as some guidelines to follow when editing astrotools.