After thinking  about software development in astronomy and talking about it with friends at work and on this blog, I thought it was about time I put my money where my mouth is. I too write software – in fact, the bulk of my work here in Leiden has been based around code I’ve written over the past 2 years for the METIS project (in IDL). The code basically calculates the sensitivity of METIS on the E-ELT, or the minimum flux it will be able to detect at a particular signal to noise (S/N) in a given exposure time over its wavelength range,  in various modes of observation. You can find the full package with background info on my brand-new github page, and a paper is in preparation (to be presented at SPIE 2010) for your referencing pleasure.

[Read more...]