Developer update | November 2022

[jakobmoss]

Since the beginning of the year, we have spent most of our time developing the BASTA-based seismic pipeline for the upcoming ESA PLATO mission 🛰️ Additionally, our research group has been under restructuring since early summer, where the original author of the code, Victor Aguirre Børsen-Koch, left science (to make the world a better and greener place by optimising windmills) and thus the BASTA team 💔 As a result hereof, the main BASTA repository has been very quiet 😴

We are therefore very happy to share with you that we have issued the first release in a long time (albeit a quite minor one) with version 1.1.6! 🎉

We are also happy to be able to dedicate more time to BASTA again, as we have fulfilled most of our PLATO obligations 🔥 We have multiple releases planned for the not-too-distant future (TM) with the following highlights:

• Implementation of the fitting method (combined ratios and glitches) from Verma et al. (2022).
• Implementation of epsilon-differences fitting (an alternative to frequency ratios based on the works by Ian Roxburgh).
• A multitude of various minor improvements (e.g. faster frequency fitting with an automatic deltaNu prior, better treatment of deltaNu in a fit with ratios, ...).

On the longer run, we envision features like:

• Refactoring of the code (especially frequency treatment and ratios fitting) with a focus on readability and maintainability
• Better treatment of phases in the fit
• New output system based on what we have developed for PLATO
• Parallelisation
• ...

We are also in the process of constructing new and updated grids for various purposes. Currently, we are working on re-fitting the LEGACY sample of main-sequence stars from Kepler, and on testing the new solar abundances (Asplund+21, Magg+22) ☀️

Please let us know if you have any questions, feature requests, or comments 🤩

Victor, thank you for everything! Go fix those windmills 🌿 Your ideas lives on! ✨

On behalf of the core developer team,
Jakob Lysgaard Rørsted 💃