Wiki Upgrade and New Page on Stellar Evolution and Atmosphere Models

Wiki Upgrade

Shows a main-sequence isochrone and several evolutionary tracks for stars of a specific mass. Click on image to see references at Wikipedia.

Some of you may have noticed that the wiki appearance has changed. This is because we have upgraded the wiki to the latest and greatest version of TikiWiki (6.2). Some of the functionality, especially wiki editing, should be greatly improved. We are still in the process of importing all of our stylistic customizations so the look and feel will improve with time.

We are also aware that the site has been generally slow and sometimes the wiki is inaccessible. Our hosting service is throttling our performance due to excess CPU usage. We are still in the process of tracking down why this is happening.

New Wiki Page on Stellar Evolution and Atmosphere Models

In the meantime, I have put together a collection of links and papers useful for modeling stars or stellar populations on a new Data Modeling page. It is thorough, but not yet complete, so please add your favorite evolution and atmosphere models and codes. Listing and linking to these models is the easy part. A more difficult proposition is deciding when to use different sets of models (mass range, age range, metallicity range, etc.). Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be one code for stellar evolution or atmospheres that is applicable over an entire mass range of stars (0.08 Msun – 150 Msun) even at a fixed age (I work with young populations). What are your favorite models and when do you use them? Are there libraries of synthetic spectra for atmospheres that I am missing (especially extending beyond the optical wavelengths)?

7 comments… add one
  • Yannick Copin Apr 4, 2011 @ 3:38

    BTW, does anyone know a good program to plot HR diagrams for educational purposes? (python preferred)

  • John Apr 6, 2011 @ 10:39

    I installed MESA last week, the open source stellar evolution code, and am very happy with it. It does seem to handle all masses though of course I am just an observer dabbling. (The brown dwarf results, for example, are reasonable and run quickly on my Macbook Pro.)

    http://mesa.sourceforge.net/

  • Jesús Maíz Apellániz Apr 12, 2011 @ 10:26

    I could not help but notice that you H-R diagram was inspired on:

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Stellar_evolutionary_tracks.gif

    of which I am the original author. Nice upgrade (and translation).

    Since people are asking for a plotting program, I used one that I wrote for IDL:

    http://jmaiz.iaa.es/software/jmaplot/current/html/jmaplot_overview.html

  • Jessica Apr 12, 2011 @ 11:54

    Hi Jesus, thanks for the heads up on the origin of the image. Now when you click on the image you should see the wikipedia page which is the source of this image. At the bottom it has the credits for the original image (you) and all the subsequent modifications by others.

  • Aaron G Apr 20, 2011 @ 12:41

    Jessica, you should link to Jesus’ image directly, not the one on that wikipedia ‘prefers’ because the track for the 2M_sun star is wrong.

  • Eric Mamajek Apr 20, 2011 @ 18:51

    The Data Modeling link is dead.

  • Warrick Apr 21, 2011 @ 11:07

    It looks like most of the Wiki is down. I can’t get to the Rumour Mill or Job Hunting links either.

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