Creating datasets

STARLIGHT data

The main objective of PyCASSO is to organize the access to the stellar synthesis data provided by STARLIGHT. If you are reading this I assume you have the following files:

• QBICK segmentation FITS file (A.K.A. zone file)
• Input spectra for STARLIGHT
• STARLIGHT output

It is important to have the name of the files following the rules:

• Input spectra must have the format: KNNNN_MMMM_suffix where KNNNN is the CALIFA number and MMMM is the zone ID. The suffix can be anything and will be ignored.
• There can be only one input file starting with each pair KNNNN_MMMM in the same directory. Use different directories for different runs. This limitation will be fixed in later releases.
• STARLIGHT output files must have the format: KNNNN_MMMM_runID. These files can be gzipped or bzipped, and the .gz or .bz2 suffixes will be ignored.

The PyCASSO import tools

The import process is similar whether you want to use FITS or HDF5 files. Keep in mind that most of the effort will be towards the HDF5 storage, and the FITS support may be dropped in the future.

The import tools are h5pycassoImport.py and pycassoImport.py to import data to HDF5 and FITS, respectively. These scripts are located in the tools directory. Here is an example of a h5pycassoImport.py run:

$ h5pycassoImport.py --synthesis-dir=./sl_out/ --spectra-dir=./sl_in/ \
> --base=Bgsd01 --base-description='Granada 01' \
> --qbick-run=q027 --qbick-description='COMBO convex voronoi zones ver. 0.2.7' \
> --run-id=eBR_v20_q027.d13c512.ps3b.k1.mC.CCM.Bgsd01.v01 \
> --run-description='q027/Bgsd01 with default parameters' \
> --zone-file=K0001_eBR_v20_q035.d13c512-planes.fits \
> --database=qalifa-synthesis.h5 K0001

The arguments are the following:

• --synthesis-dir: Path to the synthesis output directory.
• --spectra-dir: Path to the synthesis input directory.
• --base: Identifier of the base used in the synthesis.
• --base-description: Description of the base used in the synthesis.
• --qbick-run: Identifier of the qbick run used in the synthesis.
• --qbick-description: Description of the qbick run used in the synthesis.
• --run-id: Identifier of the whole synthesis run.
• --run-description: Description of the whole synthesis run.
• --zone-file: Path to the FITS file containing the qbick planes.
• --database: Path to the HDF5 database file.
• CALIFAID: Califa name of the galaxy.

It is recommended to use a single database for everything.

The arguments for the FITS version are similar. For a complete list, run h5pycassoImport.py --help or pycassoImport.py --help.

For more information on the database structure, see PyCASSO data model.