Catalog Acquisition and Compilation Tool (CACT)

Overview

The chemical evolution of dwarf galaxies is a strongly data-driven field of research, but most chemical abundance data available are scattered over different telescope databases and research papers, without any systematic effort to organize them for future studies. This tool aims to assist researchers in the field by providing a systematic way to retrieve, merge, and compile chemical abundance data from dwarf galaxies. The tool is designed to retrieve data from the Vizier database, merge tables from the same catalog, and compile them into a single catalog file. However, it is not limited to VizieR or chemical abundance data.

Installation

The tool and all the data I have compiled are available in this repository. To use the tool, simply download the repository and open it in your Python environment (I opened it as a VS Code workspace). The tool requires the following packages:

• Numpy
• Scipy
• Matplotlib
• Astropy
• Pandas
• json
• astroquery

Directory

• Data: folder for all the presentable data files.
• Plots: folder for all plots.
• Temp: temporary storage for data files corresponding to individual sources. Although this hasn't been the case yet, the tool may have to deal with enormous data sets that may saturate the memory. If such a case arises, and you are manipulating the data through a Jupyter Notebook, you may save the data here and purge the memory to avoid crashes.
• Deprecated: folder for old versions of the tool and data files. This folder exists for version control purposes and should not be used.
• config.json: configuration file. This file keeps track of the folder paths and the column headers of the data files. When importing a new catalog, the tool checks this file to see if it has already seen the column headers. If it has, it will automatically rename the column headers to be consistent with the cache file. If it hasn't, it will prompt you to rename the column headers. This file is essential for the tool to function properly.
• dataloader.py: the main script for loading data. This script contains the functions to retrieve, merge, and compile data. All functions related to data retrieval, merging, and compilation go here.
• plotmaker.py: the main script for making plots. This script contains the functions to retrieve data from the cache file, cross-match between catalogs, galaxies, or headers, and plot the result. All plotting-related functions go here.
• utilfuncs.py: utility functions, including 19,300

How to use

1. Retreive data from Vizier: Run retrieve_catalog() following the instructions in the docstring and the prompts in the terminal. Save the output as a separate .json file. If config.json has no record of a column header contained in the retrieved table, it will prompt you to rename the column as it will appear in the cache file. If the column header is already in config.json, it will automatically rename the column as it appears in the cache file. Once all new column headers have been renamed and added, the script will terminate and you will need to run it again.
2. Merge tables: If the Vizier prompt retrieves multiple tables, save them as separate .json files and run merge_tables() to merge them into one table.
3. Create catalog compilation: Copy one of the existing .json catalog files and make it the cache file. Run add_catalog() to add one of the already retrieved catalogs to the cache file.

Included catalogs

• Kirby 2009 (J/ApJS/191/352):

  • Title: Multi-element Abundance Measurements from Medium-resolution Spectra. II. Catalog of Stars in Milky Way Dwarf Satellite Galaxies
  • Members: 2947 stars in 8 galaxies.
  • Telescope: Keck
  • Instruments: DEIMOS (R ~ 6,000)
  • Fitting method: synthetic spectra, equivalent widths

• Kirby 2017 (J/ApJ/838/83):

  • Title: Triangulum II. Not Especially Dense After All
  • Members: 13 stars in 1 galaxies.
  • Telescope: Keck
  • Instruments: DEIMOS (R ~ 6,000)
  • Fitting method: equivalent widths

• Kirby 2015 (J/ApJ/801/125):

  • Title: Carbon in Red Giants in Globular Clusters and Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies
  • Members: 745 stars in 7 galaxies.
  • Telescope: Keck
  • Instruments: DEIMOS (R ~ 6,000)
  • Fitting method: synthetic spectra, equivalent widths

• Kirby 2017-A (J/ApJ/834/9):

  • Title: Chemistry and Kinematics of the Late-forming Dwarf Irregular Galaxies Leo A, Aquarius, and Sagittarius DIG
  • Members: 197 stars in 3 galaxies.
  • Telescope: Keck
  • Instruments: DEIMOS (R ~ 6,000)
  • Fitting method: synthetic spectra, equivalent widths

• Duggan 2018 (J/ApJ/869/50):

  • Title: Neutron Star Mergers are the Dominant Source of the r-process in the Early Evolution of Dwarf Galaxies
  • Members: 243 stars in 5 galaxies.
  • Telescope: Keck
  • Instruments: DEIMOS (R ~ 6,000)
  • Fitting method: synthetic spectra

• de los Reyes 2020 (J/ApJ/891/85):

  • Title: Manganese Indicates a Transition from Sub- to Near-Chandrasekhar Type Ia Supernovae in Dwarf Galaxies
  • Members: 241 stars in 9 galaxies.
  • Telescope: Keck
  • Instruments: DEIMOS (R ~ 6,000)
  • Fitting method: synthetic spectra

• Theler 2020 (J/A+A/642/A176):

  • Title: The chemical evolution of the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Sextans
  • Members: 87 stars in 1 galaxies.
  • Telescope: VLT
  • Instruments: FLAMES/GIRAFFE (R ~ 20,000), UVES (R ~ 47,000)
  • Fitting method: equivalent widths, synthetic spectra

• Skúladóttir 2019 (J/A+A/631/A171):

  • Title: Neutron-capture elements in dwarf galaxies
  • Members: 98 stars in 1 galaxies.
  • Telescope: VLT
  • Instruments: FLAMES/GIRAFFE (R ~ 19,300 ~ 22,500), UVES (R ~ 47,000)
  • Fitting method: synthetic spectra

• Reichert 2020 (J/A+A/641/A127):

  • Title: Neutron-capture elements in dwarf galaxies: A homogenized analysis of 13 dwarf spheroidal and ultra-faint galaxies
  • Members: 380 stars in 13 galaxies.
  • Telescope: ESO archive and Keck archive (VLT and Keck)
  • Instruments: FLAMES/GIRAFFE (295 observations), UVES (56 observations), X-shoooter (2 observations), HIRES (27 observations)
  • Fitting method: equivalent widths, synthetic spectra

• Kirby 2020 (J/AJ/159/46):

  • Title: Elemental Abundances in M31: The Kinematics and Chemical Evolution of Dwarf Spheroidal Satellite Galaxies
  • Members: 256 stars in 5 galaxies.
  • Telescope: Keck
  • Instruments: DEIMOS (R ~ 6,000)
  • Fitting method: equivalent widths, synthetic spectra

• Hill 2019 (J/A+A/626/A15):

  • Title: VLT/FLAMES high-resolution chemical abundances in Sculptor: a textbook dwarf spheroidal galaxy
  • Members: 129 stars in 1 galaxies.
  • Telescope: VLT
  • Instruments: FLAMES/GIRAFFE (R ~ 19,300 ~ 28,800), UVES (R ~ 47,000)
  • Fitting method: synthetic spectra, equivalent widths

• Tolstoy 2023 (J/A+A/675/A49):

  • Title: A 3D view of dwarf galaxies with Gaia and VLT/FLAMES. I. The Sculptor dwarf spheroidal
  • Members: