Mfit release notes - package release 1.5.3

Description

Mfit is a tool for fitting simple parametrisations of the sky brightness distribution to optical (visible/IR) interferometry data.

Features of mfit include:

• Asymmetric, multi-component models
• Four limb-darkening parametrizations (Taylor and Gauss-Hermite expansions, Hestroffer and square-root models), plus support for arbitrary limb-darkening profiles specified numerically (may be wavelength-dependent)
• Support for wavelength-dependent models (specified model parameters can take different values for different wavebands)
• Interactive, command-line, and GUI interfaces
• Plots of data and model
• Optional marginalisation by numerical integration of the posterior probability (requires commercial NAG library)

The graphical interface, fitgui, can straightforwardly be integrated into other applications written in python.

Please refer to the NEWS file for details of user-visible changes in this release.

Requirements

The program should work on any unix-like operating system (see below for those it has been tested on). You will need a Fortran 90 or 95 compiler to build mfit.

The following libraries are required (not supplied, but free software):

PGPLOT

http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/pgplot/

CFITSIO

http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/fitsio/fitsio.html

FFTW (v3)

http://www.fftw.org/

If you have it, mfit can make use of the commercial Numerical Algorithms Group Fortran Library (Mark 19 recommended) - see http://www.nag.co.uk/numeric/fl/FLdescription.asp

If the NAG library is not available, the marginalisation-by-integration features of mfit (--margerr, --plot mpost, --plot mpost2 in clfit) will not work.

To build mfit, you will need scons - see http://www.scons.org - and a working installation of Python.

To run the fitgui graphical interface, you will need a working installation of Python 3.7 or above and Tkinter (see http://www.python.org).

Files

The files in this package are as follows:

Filename	Description
<25>	<40>
ChangeLog	Package ChangeLog (automatically generated from CVS log messages)
README.org	This file
NEWS	Outline of new features in this and previous releases
documentation	Instructions for using mfit
SConstruct	scons configuration file, used to build mfit (see below)
bayes.f90, fit.f90, inout.f90, marginalise.F90, model.f90, plot.f90, postplot.f90, visibility.f90, wrap.f90	Routines used by mfit and clfit
main.f90	mfit main function
clfit.f90	clfit main function
calc.f90	Test code for maths module
modelplot.f90, fitsimage.f90	Image-space model plot utility
fitgui.py	GUI interface to clfit
fitgui	Wrapper script for fitgui.py - put this in PATH
fitgui_dev	Alt. wrapper script for fitgui.py - used for development
test.oifits	Test dataset (COAST data on Capella)
test.model	Binary model that fits test.oifits
pda_xermsg.f	Replacement for Starlink routine

The following files, authored by third parties, are distributed with mfit for your convenience:

Filename	Description
<25>	<40>
gamma.f	Gamma function from SPECFUN 2.5 - see readme.specfun
rjbesl.f	Bessel function from SPECFUN 2.5 - see readme.specfun
readme.specfun	Readme for SPECFUN 2.5 routines
gmst.f, dranrm.f	Sidereal time function from SLALIB
maths_pda.f, fit_pda.f	Functions from Starlink PDA library
f2kcli.f90	Fortran 200x Command Line Interface, (c) Interactive Software Services Ltd. - see f2kcli.txt
f2kcli_nagw.f90	Fortran 200x Command Line Interface - version for NAGWare f95
f2kcli.txt	manual.txt from f2kcli distribution

Building mfit

Scons is now used to build mfit. If the scons command is not available on your system, retrieve scons from http://www.scons.org and install it.

If your combination of operating system and Fortran 90/95 compiler is not one of those listed below, you may need to edit the section labelled #### May need to edit this section #### at the top of the SConstruct file.

Note that the SConstruct file is a Python script. Please contact the author if the distributed SConstruct file does not work for you and you are not sure how to edit it.

Build mfit by typing scons at the shell prompt (from the directory containing the source code). The following command-line options are supported:

debug=1

compile with debugging flags (-g etc.) - this is the default

debug=0

compile without debugging flags

release=0

compile without optimization flags - this is the default

release=1

compile with optimization flags (-O etc.)

f95=/path/to/f95

use specified compiler, rather than auto-detected one

Mfit has been tested using:

• Sun Workshop Fortran 95 on Solaris
• NAGWare Fortran 95 on Solaris
• NAGWare Fortran 95 on Linux
• G95 on Linux
• GFortran 4.6 & 4.3 on Linux (will not work with GFortran versions < 4.3)
• G95 on MacOS (thanks to Ettore Pedretti)

Please report successes or failures with other compilers/operating systems.

Installing mfit

Build the executables as described above. Install mfit by typing sudo scons install at the shell prompt.

Alternatively, follow these steps to install manually:

• Edit the command following #! at the top of fitgui so that it starts the Python interpreter on your system.
• Put the mfit and clfit executables and the fitgui script somewhere in the PATH.
• Put fitgui.py somewhere in your python module search path (e.g. in one of the directories in $PYTHONPATH).

Using mfit

Please refer to the instructions in the documentation file.

Bugs

Please report the inevitable bugs to jsy1001 (at) cam.ac.uk. Various missing features are listed in documentation.