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NEMO: A Stellar Dynamics Toolbox

Peter Teuben (e-mail: teuben@astro.umd.edu)
University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.

Abstract

We describe NEMO, a collection of software with which a wide range of experimental situations can be constructed, dynamically evolved and analyzed. Great importance has also been given to make the package extendible and to flexibly import and export data. NEMO has been implemented within and integrated into the UNIX environment. A unified command syntax provides users with a simple help facility, and programmers with a ready-made user interface. A general method for hierarchical structured binary data files is used to communicate between programs.

The Appendix describes a proposal to adopt FITS, a widely used data format in the astronomical community, as a basis to interchange and archive simulation results. It would be a specific implementation of the now standard FITS BINTABLE extension.

Keywords: Stellar dynamics -- Data interchange -- Software -- Numerical methods

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• Introduction
• System Components
• Documentation
• Future
• Example
• References
• APPENDIX: Data Exchange Proposal
  • Why a new format, and which?
  • Implementation decisions
  • Software
  • Example Binary Table Header
• About this document ...