Virtual Astronomy Software Talks

A monthly seminar on astronomy software

Astronomy research is supported by a large number of software projects, often working behind the scenes. The VAST seminar series puts this software in the spotlight, allowing developers to share their libraries and projects with the community. Taking place virtually, VAST seminars can reach the global astronomy community, and will feature two projects and an open discussion each month, allowing for meaningful communication with the community.

Also see the exoVAST series for talks on exoplanetary science software.

Organizers

Logistics

When

Talks will be monthly on the third Wednesday of each month at 11 am East coast time (US) via Zoom.

Format

Each VAST will consist of two 20 minute talks followed by an open discussion.

Join

Join the VAST mailing list to receive the Zoom links: VAST google group.

Propose a talk

The organizing committee will select the talks for each monthly seminar. If you wish to propose a talk, fill an issue on the VAST Github page.

Upcoming VAST seminars

Sept 18, 2024: Simulations on GPUs

Ben Wibking (MSU): Quokka—a two-moment radiation hydro code with adaptive mesh refinement.
Evan Schneider (Pitt): Cholla—a 3D GPU-based hydro code.

Oct 16, 2024

Michelle Lochner: astronomaly—A flexible framework for anomaly detection in astronomy.
Tomáš Plšek: CADET—a machine learning pipeline for identification of X-ray cavities on noisy Chandra images

Nov 20, 2024

Dec 18, 2024

Past VAST seminars

Aug 21, 2024: no seminar. Enjoy the summer!

July 17, 2024 (canceled)

June 19, 2024: no seminar (Juneteenth holiday)

May 15, 2024

Will Barnes: sunpy—the community-developed, free and open-source solar data analysis environment for python.
Nick Murphy: PlasmaPy—a python library for plasma research and education.
: recorded presentation

Apr 17, 2024

Rich Townsend (Wisconsin): Multidimensional Stellar Grids
: recorded presentation

Mar 20, 2024

Feb 21, 2024

Alexey Mints (AIP): TOPCAT and STILTS
: recorded presentation

Jan 17, 2024

Brett Morris (STScI): Jdaviz
Kaze Wong (Flatiron): showyourwork!
: recorded presentation

Dec 20, 2023: Enjoy the Holidays

Nov 15, 2023: Alert Brokers

Anais Möller (Swinburne): Finkbroker
Tom Matheson (NOIR Lab): Antares
Francisco Förster (U Chile): ALeRCE
Christophere Hernández (Pitt): Pitt-Google Alert Broker
: recorded presentation

Oct 18, 2023: Rad Hydro

Sam Dunham (Vanderbilt): Thornado: a high-order neutrino radiation hydrodynamics code
Brandon Barker (MSU): Phoebus: Phifty One Ergs Blows Up A Star
: recorded presentation

Sept 20, 2023: ExoVAST!

Joe Renaud (Maryland / NASA Goddard): NASA Goddard’s Exoplanet Modeling & Analysis Center and exoVAST
David Rice (Open University Israel): Solving and visualizing planet interiors with MAGRATHEA
: recorded presentation

August: no seminar. Enjoy the summer!

July 19, 2023: Teaching Computational Astrophysics (lightning talks + open discussion)

Devin Silvia (MSU)
Stella Offner (UT Austin)
Ari Maller (CUNY City Tech)
Michael Zingale (Stony Brook)
: recorded presentation

June 21, 2023: Grad lightning talks

Emily Bordeaux (Dartmouth)
Fergus Baker: General relativistic ray tracing with Gradus.jl (University of Bristol) [slides]
Hui Yang: Multiwavelength machine learning classification with MUWCLASS (The George Washington University)
: recorded presentation

May 17, 2023: Joint Seminar with SciCodes

A panel discussion on publishing, indexing, discovering, and citing scientific software.

Simon Hettrick (SSI)
Lauren Cadwallader (PLOS)
Edwin Henneken (ADS)
Alice Allen (ASCL)
: recorded presentation

April 19, 2023: lightkurve & light-curve

Rebekah Hounsell: lightkurve a python package for working with Kepler and TESS data
Konstantin Malanchev: light-curve a RUST/python package for time-series analysis of ZTF and VRO/LSST
: recorded presentation

March 15, 2023: prose & CASA

Lionel Garcia: prose: a python tool for astronomical image pipelines
Bjorn Emonts: CASA: the Common Astronomy Software Applications package for processing ALMA and VLA data
: recorded presentation

Feb 15, 2023: Firefly & NEMO...

Alex Gurvich: Firefly: a WebGL interactive particle viewer
Peter Teuben: NEMO: a toolbox for stellar dynamics, particle sims, stellar orbits, and more
: recorded presentation

Jan 18, 2023: MESA & TULIPS

Frank Timmes: MESA: an open-source 1D stellar evolution software instrument
Eva Laplace: TULIPS: Tool for Understanding the Lives, Interiors, and Physics of Stars
: recorded presentation

Dec 21, 2022: Lightning Talks

Neven Caplar: LSSTseries: a package for working with LSST time series data
Sally Dodson-Robinson: NWelch: a python implementation of Welch's method for power spectra and more
Camilla Pacifici: Jdavis: a package of astronomical data analysis vis tools for Jupyter
Alexander Smith Clark: pynucastro: a python library for nuclear astrophysics
Anowar Shajib: lenstronomy: a package for modeling strong gravitational lenses
: recorded presentation

Nov 16, 2022: TARDIS & GaiaXPy

Andrew Fullard: TARDIS: an open-source Monte Carlo radiative-transfer code
Daniela Ruz-Mieres: GaiaXPy: A python library for handling Gaia BP/RP spectra
: recorded presentation

Oct 19, 2022: AstroPy & yt

Erik Tollerud: AstroPy: a community common core package for Astronomy in python
Matt Turk: yt: a framework for analysis and visualization in python.
: recorded presentation

Sept 21, 2022: Stingray & PINT

Matteo Bachetti: Stingray: a spectral timing package written in python.
Anne Archibald: PINT: a pulsar timing library written in python.
: recorded presentation