Scientific software for NASA space telescopes
eMPT software
The eMPT software suite is a Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) community tool, offered to JWST observers as an alternative to the Multi-shutter Array (MSA) Planning Tool (MPT) in the STScI Astronomers' Proposal Tool (APT) for JWST Near-infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) Multi-object Spectroscopic (MOS) proposal planning. The core eMPT modules are written in Fortran for computational speed, and may be run from the Unix command line or via a Python-wrapper script.
The eMPT was developed in collaboration with the NIRSpec Guaranteed Time Observer (GTO) team with sophisticated algorithms and a modular architecture to achieve the ambitious goals of its science program. As a result, the eMPT provides a highly flexible and customizable interface for the user, with options to finely control the workflow and insert their own software modules to tune their MSA slit masks to the particular scientific objectives at hand.
Credit: Northrup Grumman
NIRSpec MSA on-sky field of view
NIRSpec MSA 0.2"x0.46" shutter showing intra-slit target positions
2-D spectral traces of NIRSpec MSA targets
Examples of file output from the eMPT that assist in JWST/NIRSpec MSA observation planning:
Credit: NASA/CXC/NGST
Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observations (CIAO) software
The High Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD) Science Data Systems (SDS) group at the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC) is tasked with developing the algorithms and data analysis scripts behind the CIAO software that serves the observational X-ray astronomy community. While a member of HEAD SDS at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, I formally developed, tested, and documented CIAO in Python, and created an extensive user interface to X-ray imaging, spectroscopic, and timing analysis with CIAO. I also spent significant time serving as primary writer of the documentation for the CXC Chandra Source Catalog and User Interface, which helped earn a NASA Public Service Group Achievement Award for the team, in addition to a personal monetary award from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
Examples of the types of X-ray data products processed and scientifically analyzed by CIAO: