Platon

This is a major update on v2, the version our paper is based on. We made substantial improvements to PLATON:

1. Eclipse depth calculator is now out of beta. It now supports GPU acceleration on CUDA-capable devices: just install CUDA, cudamat, and gnumpy, and PLATON should automatically detect gnumpy

2. All molecular absorption data has been regenerated using the latest line lists from ExoMol (most molecules), HITRAN (some molecules), CDSD-4000 (CO2), and Schwenke (TiO)

3. v3 is more than two times faster than v2. The speed improvement comes from two places: a) we transposed data arrays to improve cache locality, which speeds the code up by 1/3; b) reduced the number of layers the atmosphere is divided into from 500 to 250, which changes transit depths by less than a percent but substantially speeds up the code

- Implemented Mie scattering
- Stellar activity correction
- Increased access to atmospheric properties from transit_depth_calculator (e.g. abundances, absorption coefficients, transit chord optical depths, P-T profiles etc.)
- Eclipse depth calculator and retriever (beta)
- Multiple calls of change_wavelength_bins
- Changed interpolation algorithm from linear to logarithm in pressure
- More user-friendly output file
- Added visualiser to draw transiting exoplanets

The only major change is that we've dropped min_P_profile and max_P_profile. Instead, atmospheric profile will always include the entire supported range of pressures. Introduced ref_pressure (=10^5 Pa), so that planetary radius will always refer to the radius at this pressure.

PLATON is officially out! It's much more user-friendly compared to the beta, but like any software, still has plenty of room for improvement. Any feedback is appreciated.

beta
First stage release of forward model & retrieval framework for exoplanet atmospheres. Based on ExoTransmit.