TWINKLE!

Introduction

Twinkle is a Python-based tool that has the ability to calculate the spectral energy distribution (SED) of a stellar source using empirical photometric data and stellar model grids.

Twinkle was originally created to help me calculate the excess infrared (IR) flux from a star. The presence of an IR excess is evidence for dust orbiting the star. This dust would have been created by the grinding and collisions of asteroids, usually moved around through the gravitational influence of a larger planetary object – so basically the presence of an IR excess points to the potential for finding planets. You can check out the published papers from my thesis using this code in Patel, Metchev, and, Heinze, 2014 and Patel, et al., 2017.

Interested in learning more about debris disks? Check out my blog post.

This code base can help you quickly calculate the temperature and location of the dust to first order by fitting the assumed blackbody or modified blackbody function to the broadband excess emission.

Feel free to fork and contribute. I created the bulk of the code and fitting routines 10 years ago, so there are probably some functions that are outdated and could be replaced by scipy functions. This will eventually be updated or feel free to fix it and push the changes.

Available Features

  • Model multiple stellar SEDs at once with easy to use stellar input file.

  • Late B to K-spectral type modeling support. Additional spectal type modeling is possible but not tested (yet)

  • Plotting capabilities (link to plotting page upcoming) of the empirical data, and the modeled distribution.

  • This Jupyter Notebook will give you a quick-start on using Twinkle.

Note

The code hasn’t been tested in a while so there will probably be issues with it that are still being worked on. If you want to contribute, fork and pull-request things up.

Future Capabilities

  • Graphical User Interface

  • Generation of several SEDs in one execution.

  • Generation of (modified) blackbody fits to IR excess.

Installation & Quick-Start

Here is the Twinkle Github Link.

Feel free to fork it, install it, etc.

1. Install Twinkle

You can install it through pip:

pip install git+https://github.com/astropatel/twinkle.git

or by downloading it directly from the github project and adding it to your PYTHONPATH.

2. Set-Up Directories and ParameterFile

Next you’ll need to make sure to get the directory structure of your working directory set-up right. This also includes editting the input parameterfile.

The parameterfile contains information on the names you’ve set for the folders/files, photometric bands you will use to fit the SED, any associated excess, and more.

You can find directions on the set-up and parameterfile on the Set-Up Page.

3. Create/Edit User Input File

If you want your stars to Twinkle, you’ll need to give the code information on which stars you want it process! The user input file is an excel file you can edit to include physical and photometric information on multiple stars the code can pull from.

For more information on the user input file, check out the User Input File page.

4. Fire up the code

Check out the tutorial from the Jupyter Notebook on how to use Twinkle once you have everything set up.

Contents:

The Name

I prefer my projects to have apt names, but then like to backronym it into something non-sensical and fun. While I haven’t landed on one for TWINKLE, here are suggestions from friends and colleagues

  • The WIse Non-gaseous disK Locator Extraordinaire (by: Scott Barenfeld)

  • The Wise Infrared Non-gaseous disK Locator Extraordinaire (by: Calen Henderson)

  • That’s What I Need to Know about teLescopes from Experts (by: Tiffany Meshkat)