Documentation for the Helper Programs

A number of extra smaller programs are available to help use the main ASTRA program. A brief description of each will be given here.

linefreq

This is used to generate the MOLECDATA.***, FREQ.*** and G.*** files for linear molecules. As described in section 4.2.2 it is possible to directly calculate the Einstein A and B coefficients for linear molecules as well as the transition frequencies. These are calculated for any required molecule after the molecule rotation constant, dipole moment and name have been entered. Once calculated they are then placed in appropriately named files in the correct format.

freqsortc

This does the same for H$_2$CO as the linefreq program does for linear molecules. Comments in the program itself and the accompanying text files give a more detailed explanation of how to use the program. See page  for a more detailed description of what the program does.

outhard

This is the main program for producing output. It is intended to be controlled through the Tcl/Tk interface for ASTRA which calls it when required. However, it is possible to control it manually by altering the .outhardrc file. This file contains two entries. The first line is the output device name as required by PGPLOT (eg. xwin for xwindows, or ps_l for landscape postscript) and the second line is the run number. This selects the archived run from the Run directory. The program then produces correctly scaled and labelled plots of the run results, overlaying the telescope data if appropriate. If the output mode is chosen to be epsf_l (ie. encapsulated prostscript) then two additional entries are needed to give the height and width of the plot (in centimetres).

sphericaltest

This program is used to prepare the input files for the ASTRA program to simulate a spherically symmetric cloud to enable comparisons with the STEN program to be made. It does this by reading in the size of the model cloud from SHELL.DAT and then calculating the required parameters (eg. hydrogen density, kinetic temperature, etc.) at the ring boundaries and the writing out the run.** files as required.

disktest

This performs the same function as the sphericaltest program except for a simple disk model whose parameters only vary with disk radius (ie. no height variation in the parameters).

posvel

This program is used to produce position velocity diagrams for a model cloud. It can either be controlled through the Tcl/TK interface or manually. If it is called by the Tcl/Tk interface the value in the file .posvelrc2 is set to 1, otherwise it will be set to 0 which triggers the interactive interface. In non-interactive mode all the parameters it needs are passed through the .posvelrc file (ie. type of output, which run numbers to model, etc.). It can combine multiple runs if necessary. It takes output from many positions in a line across a model cloud. The positions must be evenly spaced, however, they can be given in any order as the program will re-order them if necessary. These results at these positions are then displayed as a position velocity graph.

saverun

This is a simple program whose purpose is to correctly move all the various files from the model just run to their correct storage location. The user also has an opportunity to enter up to 10 lines of comment about the model. These comments are then appended to the comments.txt file.