OpenStars project

ishort "at" ap.smu.ca

Mission:
To provide university and high school instructors and students with physics-based pedagogical web apps for demonstrating and investigating stellar astronomy and astrophysics, and exoplanetary systems, at a wide range of educational levels, that are accessible on any common computational device as is,
AND
To provide astrophysics students with public domain open source stellar astrophysical modeling codes with which they can experiment, and to which they can contribute, using the developer console of any web browser on any device.

Vision:
To popularize and normalize astronomy by deploying intuitive and engaging interactive credible simulations of astronomical objects and systems in a way that can be seamlessly integrated with web cluture, including web-based gaming, massive multi-player virtual worlds, and social media.

Collaboration and supervision opportunities in astrophysics, web development, and pedagogy. Projects range from Undergrad to M.Sc. level:

• Stellar atmospheric modeling and spectrum synthesis: Develop any aspect of ChromaStar (CS) and ChromaStarServer (CSS):
  • Implement the line lists as SQL databases to be queried by CSS Done
  • Re-do the flux integration as 2D longitude & latitude tiles and provide for customized star spots First part done
  • Add molecular bands in the JOLA approximation Done EVEN MORE for 5 TiO bands - CH g band next if I can find data!
  • Add and test additional molecules (beyond current TiO)Done by integrating Phil Bennett's GAS package for CSS and CSPy
  • Add H₂ Rayleigh scattering opacityDone for CSPy and CSS
  • Add proper atomic energy level data structure, with link to atomic transitions, for proper line broadening
  • Add approximate line blanketing for lambda < 400 nm as a pseudocontinuous "just-overlapping-atomic-line" opacity source for radiative equilibrium temperature corrections
  treatment
  • Improve atomic partition function treatment - see data of Barklem & Collet 2016Done
  • Add important metal bound-free and Rayleigh scattering opacities to improve blue/near-UV opacity Done
  • Work on temperature correction and overall structure convergence (or at least add low log(g) template models for the current T_kin(tau) re-scaling
  • Add interactive periodic table to CSS interface to allow non-solar abundance distribution - begin with simple alpha-enhancement
  • Add radial-tangential macro-turbulent broadening (now possible) and spectral line bisector visualization (see David Gray Lectures on FGK stars)
• Exoplanetary atmosphere and surface modeling: Improve the habitable zone model and provide for greater planet customization
• Add solvents other than water - ammonia, carbon dioxide, methaneDone
• In situ Exo-planet transit light-curve modellingDone Spring 2020
• Stellar interior structure modeling: Develop PolyStar
• Provide for isochrone generation
• Port to Python3 with visualization in a Jupyter notebookDone and done (May 2017)
• Port to Julia with visualization in Jupyter - faster than python
• Add H, J, K AND ugriz filters and colors - spectrum now goes to 2600 nm Done
• Performance:
Add faster spectrum-synthesis-only mode to CSS and CSDB
Accelerate computation of CS with WebGL
Accelerate computation of CSS, CSDB, and CSPy with multi-threading in Java and python
• Web interface development: Develop the OpenStars UIs by incorporating the latest web programing libraries and methods
• Re-do plots in HTML5 SVG and incorporate d3 First part done for CS
• User interface (UI) development: Improve the OpenStars UIs by basing them on sound pedagogical design principles
• Web development: Game-ify and/or puzzle-fy any OpenStars apps
• Connection with BGO twitter interface?
• Port as app to Android and iOS stores

References

Friends of OpenStars

Research-grade codes

Spectral analysis

Atmospheric modeling + spectrum synthesis

Spectrum synthesis

NLTE Spectral line