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11

I'll chip in here because I'm a research student and I work with a stellar evolution code (the Cambridge STARS code) more-or-less daily. Regarding some of the comments to the question, stellar evolution is actually quite fast, depending what code you use. Certainly, it isn't like hydrodynamics or N-body simulations like those used in galaxy ...

10

First off, physics tends to provide a very good background for people who move on to study problems in other areas, which is perhaps why there is a lot of cross-over to computer science. However, there are also a number of areas at the interface of computer science and physics which attract people from both sides: Computer hardware (which is generally ...

9

The two main free destop programs that I know about, Stellarium and Celestia, do not include the proper motion of the stars when they move forward and backward in time. At least according to documentation that I've seen. These programs claim to do it but I have no experience with them: Home Planet (free) Starry Night (commercial) The Sky (commercial) ...

8

You can perform $\LaTeX$ search - that is, write formula in LaTeX in an appropriate search engine: http://www.latexsearch.com/ However, as one can type the same expression in different ways and with different symbols, I never used it it practice. (Anyone did?)

8

First of all, I do not have any experience with this, I am an Astronomy hobbyist at best. So I am just going to present what I found with minimal comment at this time. I found this web page that links to several programs: http://nbody.sourceforge.net/ They link to the University of Washington and their n-body shop. I don't know what your status must be ...

7

Yes, NASA's FTools software contains a program that will do this for you. Go to the FTools website and download a copy of the HEATOOLS. You want to specify that you want the Fimage package on the download page. Since you're running windows, you'll proabably need to download the PC-Cygwin package and install Cygwin as well as there is no native Windows ...

5

No there isn't, but I've always wanted to write one. When I was an undergrad, I thought about designing quantum computer games. The idea was to make a simulation which would get people used to quantum stuff: Here were the ideas I had back then (never implemented past undergraduate daydreams): Spin-1/2 flight combat: You fly carrying a spinor, which ...

5

Dithering is as much an art as a science and depends on many factors including, but not limited to: The type of object being observed (point source, small extended object, large extended object) Telescope parameters (The field of view of the telescope relative to the size of the object, optical quality, size and type of abberations, etc) The quality of the ...

5

If you don't already have an estimate of where you are pointing, the only other option I know of is WCSFixer. There also used to be the Pittsbugh WCS correction service, but it seems to be defunct now. These tools only work with FITS files, so your first step would be converting whatever format you have into a FITS file. The FITS website has a FITS viewer ...

4

From my reasoning and knowledge of one CS professor who has a PhD in astronomy: Above all, the answer depends on your definition of what a "computer scientist" is. What do you mean by "computer scientist"? Someone who does research in a computer science department? Or does perhaps artificial intelligence, algorithm development, or grid computing for a ...

4

For statistical analysis Gnumeric works very well, as it has passed a lot of statistical test. This report explains why it is a much better choice than Excel. Of course there is also R, which is the largest free statistical package and is used in a lot of research areas. Personally I think going the plain python route is also not a bad idea, as there is ...

4

As mentioned in the comments, you need one more piece of information to determine the magnitude of the velocity. You said that you might use the eccentricity, so in that case you can use the formula given here and deduce a quadratic equation on the velocity which yields: $$v= \sqrt{\frac{G M}{r \sin(\alpha)} (1 \pm \epsilon)},$$ where $G$ is the ...

3

There was a similar question at Mathoverflow. I think it contains some useful references and discussion so it's definitely worth checking out. Usually I would post this as a comment under the question but probably nobody would notice it anymore. And seeing that the other answer is also quite short I hope this is fine.

3

You might find something on this page, if not, on the site somewhere. I have not checked it out tonight, but I am sure I have seen programs there, in the past. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/ Clive Ballard

3

There are a number of commercial packages you can use for such purposes. Comsol multiphysics simulation software is a general purpose physics modelling software package that I belive can deal with electromagnitism. The link to their website is http://www.uk.comsol.com. Ansys is another commercial vendor that provides a electromagnetic physics module. There ...

3

The industrial tool is zemax; however, it is very expensive. If you just want to make diagrams, the TeX package pst-optics might do the trick. In the gaussian beam regime, optocad (free) is a tool often used in the laser interferometer gravitational wave detector community.

3

I think the main reason why this is so common is that many people who are of the tenured professor age now (50-60) were in graduate school before most colleges offered a Ph.D. in computer science. So back then, people who were interested in theoretical computer science got their doctorate in Mathematics, and people who were interested in applied computer ...

3

Some static ones: Zotero Firefox plugin for Visual Understanding Environment CiteSpace Thesis visualization There are dynamical ones: PaperCube by Peter Bergstrom (it's a pity the program is working only on a demo database, the sole arXiv database would be great) Web of Science - Citation map (nice, but for seeing not exploring + only for WOS) (I ...

3

The closest program to the description is Phun: http://phun.en.softonic.com/ Download it, it's a lot of fun. Oh, I see, you want 3D immediately. Ambitious enough so that I won't erase my answer. Update, May 2012. You may try to download trial of Wolfram System Modeler, http://www.wolfram.com/system-modeler/

3

If you only have a few files to convert, and you don't want to install software yourself, the CDF group at GSFC offers a web service that will convert from FITS to ASCII, which can then be imported in Excel: http://translators.gsfc.nasa.gov/ If you have more to convert, and you're willing to do a little programming, there's a WSDL description to generate ...

3

Yes, there are lots of them (free and not free). Try searching for "sky simulator" or "planetarium". Just two examples: Stellarium is a free application you can download and run on your computer. Neave Planetarium works in your browser.

3

The first program I used to do that, is currently available and still free, as most modern software, allows the use of updated catalogs and the use of different times to see the simulation. Stellarium IMHO has a better rendering, even when I prefer the controls on Cartes du Ciel. Cartes du Ciel

3

Define "best". As always, there's no one-size-fits-all answer. Are you just a casual observer, looking mostly for naked-eye objects? Or are you looking through a telescope for deep-space stuff? Is your scope a go-to that can be interfaced with and controlled from the phone? Here are some examples, look at the features and decide what's best for you: ...

3

Since you say you're a programmer, I see where criterion #1 comes from. But telescopes are not computers, you can't upgrade the CPU today, the RAM tomorrow, and so on. A scope is defined largely by its aperture (the diameter of the objective lens or mirror). That puts a major cap on pretty much everything else, performance-wise. Aperture is like an old ...

3

Beyond the qotoolbox, which is showing its age but still very useful, I'm not sure what to suggest. A graphical package does not exist (as far as I'm aware), and is not likely to unless you make it yourself since this not in high demand.

3

I think it simply means that you didn't choose the point in the parameter space that gives the Higgs mass you want. Try and increase $\tan \beta$ and/or $m_0, m_{1/2}, A$ and see how this affects the mass of the lightest Higgs. And yes, this little $h_0$ is a SM-like Higgs. To answer the question in your title, the mass of the lightest Higgs in the MSSM is ...

2

I would need to see - and understand - your code but it is not clear from the text whether you also remember and take care of the rotation of the ball - its angular frequency (and the internal angular momentum, which is proportional). I am convinced that this is totally necessary to get some realistic dynamics and it's where most of the pinball fun is all ...

2

I am not aware of a simple program to do what you ask. What comes to mind are either raytracers or finite element methods (FEM). For a list of raytracing software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ray_tracing_software I am not aware of any free FEM software but for an overview of the principle go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_element Edit: ...

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