The ASteCA package is designed to fully automatize the usual tests applied on star clusters in order to determine their characteristics: center, radius, stars membership probabilities and associated intrinsic/extrinsic parameters: metallicity, age, reddening, distance, total mass, binarity fraction, etc.

IMPORTANT: until the release of v1.0.0 the package will be under heavy development. Keep this in mind if you want to use it on your research.

After downloading the package, and assuming all necessary dependencies are installed (see the code's requirements), simply open a terminal, move into the unpacked ASteCA folder and run:

$ python asteca.py

Read the code's documentation for more details on how to use ASteCA.

Notice that, as the code itself, the docs are still under development and many sections will be incomplete or just empty. The docs will be improved as new versions are released.

The latest release can always be accessed here.

See the CHANGELOG.md file for a list of previous releases, the changes made in each one, and possible compatibility breaks with older versions.

The accompanying article describing the code in detail can be accessed via A&A, and referenced using the following BibTeX entry:

@article{Perren_2015,
    author = {{Perren, G. I.} and {V\'azquez, R. A.} and {Piatti, A. E.}},
    title = {ASteCA: Automated Stellar Cluster Analysis},
    DOI= "10.1051/0004-6361/201424946",
    url= "http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201424946",
    journal = {A\&A},
    year = 2015,
    volume = 576,
    pages = "A6",
    month = "04",
}

This article will rapidly become outdated as new versions are released. For an up to date description of ASteCA please refer to the online documentation.

• List of open bugs.
• List of planned enhancements.
• High priority issues.
• All open issues.

If you distribute a copy or make a fork of the project, you have to credit this project as source.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Copyright (c) 2014 Gabriel Perren - Released under the GPL v3 license.

Version numbering follows the Semantic Versioning guidelines. Releases will be numbered with the following format:

<major>.<minor>.<patch>-<build>

Constructed with the following guidelines:

• A new major release indicates a large change where backwards compatibility is broken.
• A new minor release indicates a normal change that maintains backwards compatibility.
• A new patch release indicates a bugfix or small change which does not affect compatibility.
• A new build release indicates this is a pre-release of the version.