Elliot Robinson

Elliot Robinson

Jan 22, 2015

Group 6 Copy 59
1

How we share software

Much of our theoretical work results in pseudo-code algorithms which I translate to running C++ code. This code is version controlled and freely available for review or download under an open-source license via our GitHub repository. This service also provides a forum for bug reports or feature request via the "Issues" tracker.

Since October 2014, we have provided pre-built Amazon AWS instances in several regions. These allow you to quickly create an experiment-ready server with up to 32 CPUs which is accessible from anywhere in the world via SSH, all without installing a single development tool. AMI IDs are available on the release page. In future, we'd like to augment these instances with a web-interface which would allow data upload, result download, and real-time display of diagnostic information while running the software.

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  • Denny Luan
    Denny LuanBacker
    Is it standard practice to open source code like this, particularly for space related research?
    Jan 26, 2015
  • Elliot Robinson
    Elliot RobinsonResearcher
    In general, anyone who publishes in astroinformatics releases code for the purposes of peer review, but this is often just a tarball of a code folder and doesn't include any sort of revision history or ongoing support. There are a few big names (MESA and IRAF come to mind) who offer what I'd refer to as "proper open-source projects". Much like these better-known projects, we offer a version-controlled code base and a level of ongoing support. For the record, most of this lab note was inspired by this article (http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/vms-considered-harmful.html) which outlines some of the issues with software releases in bioinformatics.
    Jan 26, 2015

About This Project

How Old is the Milky Way Galaxy?
Embry Riddle Aeronautical University

We derive the ages and other properties of stars by combining theoretical astrophysics, data from the best telescopes, Bayesian statistical analyses, and advanced computational techniques. We have developed an algorithm that allows us to combine the age information from multiple white dwarf stars to derive the age of our Galaxy. We request funds to support converting our algorithm to high-performance software code. From this we will both derive the age of the Galaxy as well as make our code publicly available for other research groups.

More Lab Notes From This Project

Campaign Ended

How Old is the Milky Way Galaxy?

A project funded by 28 people

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