This page describes how to install the stellar atmosphere files for versions C06.02 and before.  Instructions for C07 and later are found here.

Kevin Volk incorporated three large grids of stellar atmosphere continua into Cloudy, and more have since been added since. The table star atlas, table star Rauch,  table star Werner and table star costar commands use these. 

Cloudy must compile the stellar atmosphere files before they can be used. It is not necessary to do this step if you do not wish to use these stellar continua.  This both rebins the atmospheres onto the Cloudy continuum energy mesh and converts them into direct access binary format.  This step only needs to be done once when the code is first installed or if the continuum energy mesh is changed.

These are available here.  The single file stars.tar.gz will explode into four files, kurucz.list, kurucz.ascii, werner.ascii,  and stars.htm.  Only the first three are needed.

We can use either the "first generation" (H-Ca) models, or the "second generation" (H-Ni) models.  These are referred to as the old and default stellar atmospheres.  The compile stars Rauch and table stars Rauch commands will use the second generation atmospheres by default.  If the keyword "old" appears on the command lines then the first generation atmospheres are used instead.  The names of the first and second generation stellar atmosphere files are distinct so both sets can happily coexist in the same directory.

The second generation Rauch atmospheres

These instructions are for the "new" Rauch atmospheres, which include effects of the elements between H and Ni.  The new set has two abundance sets, solar and halo. This can only be used with C96 beta 5 and later.  The reference for these emergent continua is Rauch T., 2002, H-Ni grid, available at http://astro.uni-tuebingen.de/~rauch  The paper describing the stars is available here.

First obtain the tar files from Thomas Rauch’s Web site.  The link http://astro.uni-tuebingen.de/~rauch/flux.html points to the top level for all the stellar atmospheres.  You want the "second generation H-Ni" set. Click on the "H-Ni" link.  At the bottom of the page you will find four sets of atmospheres.  You want the first pair of solar and halo abundances dated Nov 2002.  Each is about 4.5mb large - you do not want the combined solar & halo abundance files.  The general format for each atmosphere is temperature_gravity_abundances.bin_0.1.

Uncompress and explode both tar files into a directory. This will create a large number of stellar atmosphere files with names ending with the extension "bin_0.1". Next change to the directory with these files and execute Cloudy with the single command

This will read in the large number of smaller files and create the two larger files, rauch02_halo.ascii and rauch02_solar.ascii that are needed for the next step. Only these two files need be retained.

The first generation Rauch atmospheres

These instructions are for initializing the "old" Rauch atmospheres, which include effects of the elements between H and Ca.  The old set has two abundance sets, solar and halo. This set of atmospheres extends to higher temperatures than the second generation set.  Versions of Cloudy before beta 5 of C96 can only use this set.

First obtain the tar files from Thomas Rauch’s Web site.  The link http://astro.uni-tuebingen.de/~rauch/flux.html points to the top level for all the stellar atmospheres.  You want the "first generation H-Ca" set. Click on the "H-Ca" link.  At the bottom of the page you will find several sets of atmospheres.  You want two sets of files, for solar and halo abundances.  These are dated Feb 1998 and May 1998 respectively, and note that they are for versions 90.05 and later.  The May 2001 files will not work with this version of Cloudy.  The general format for each atmosphere is temperature_gravity_abundances.wf.

Uncompress and explode these files in a directory. This will create a large number of stellar atmosphere files with names ending with the extension wf. Next change to the directory with the star files and execute Cloudy with the single command

This will read in the large number of small files and create the two larger files rauch_halo.ascii and rauch_solar.ascii that are needed for the next step. Only these two files need be retained.

The CoStar spectra

These are developed by Daniel Schaerer and are described in Schaerer D., et al, 1996ab, A&A 310, 837 and A&A 312, 475, and Schaerer & de Koter (1997; A&A 322, 598).  They are available on the web from  http://www.stsci.edu/ftp/science/starburst/SdK96.html . Download both the Sc1_costar_z004_lb.fluxes and Sc1_costar_z020_lb.fluxes files. 

Compiling the star files

At this stage we should have the following sets of files:

werner.ascii This is a plain ASCII version of the Werner and Heber (1991) grid of hot stellar atmospheres and was downloaded from the Cloudy web site. These data extend from 10^-5 Ryd through 182.25 Ryd.

kurucz.list This is a list of all files in the Kurucz (1991) grid and was obtained from the Cloudy web site.

kurucz.ascii This is the set of Kurucz (1991) atmospheres obtained from the Cloudy web site. The wavelengths of the grid are stored in nanometers as the first record. These data extend from 9.090 nm (10.0 Ryd) through 1.600´ 10⁵ nm (5.7´ 10^-4 Ryd).

rauch_halo.ascii and rauch_solar.ascii These are the sets of first generation Rauch hot stellar atmospheres,  as produced above with the compile stars old rauch initialize command.  (you don't need this set if you only want to use the second generation atmospheres).

rauch02_halo.ascii and rauch02_solar.ascii These are the sets of second generation Rauch hot stellar atmospheres,  as produced above with the compile stars rauch initialize command.

Sc1_costar_z004_lb.fluxes and Sc1_costar_z020_lb.fluxes - The set of CoStar stellar atmospheres from the STScI site described above.

Move into the directory where the files kurucz.ascii, kurucz.list, rauch_halo.ascii, rauch_solar.ascii, rauch02_halo.ascii, rauch02_solar.ascii, Sc1_costar_z004_lb.fluxes, Sc1_costar_z020_lb.fluxes and werner.ascii  live.

If you want all the stellar continua just execute Cloudy with the single command compile stars as input. The file compilestars.in that is included in the data distribution will do this - you would only need to execute this script.  Examine the resulting output for any comments indicating success or failure. I do this with the output coming to the screen so that I can monitor progress. This step typically takes about 15 minutes on my PC. 

The previous command only compiles the second generation Rauch stars.  If you also want to use the first generation atmospheres then it is also necessary to run the program a second time, with the single command compile stars only old Rauch. 

It is possible that only some of these stellar continua are needed.  In this case use the "compile stars only xxx" command to compile the continua you need.  The xxx options are "atlas", costar, Rauch, and Werner, as described further below.

The direct access files atlas.mod, rauch_halo.mod, rauch_solar.mod, rauch02_halo.mod, rauch02_solar.mod, costar_halo.mod, costar_sol.mod, and werner.mod will be created by the compile step. These are the files which Cloudy must access to use the table star atlas, table star Rauch, table star costar, or table star Werner continua. Only these files must be kept and they should be placed in the data directory, as described next. 

To execute the code from other directories it is necessary to have the path set to point to the directory containing the star files.  This can be done with the set path command described in part I of Hazy, but it is far more convenient to put the *.mod files in the same directory where the atomic data live.  The code will automatically be able to find the stellar continua data.  

When doing later photoionization calculations, the code will stop if it cannot locate the files when the table stars command is entered. The code also checks that the energy grids in the star files and the code itself agree, to confirm that the star files are appropriate for the current version of Cloudy.

Only the *.mod files are needed by Cloudy. The other files can be deleted or compressed after the compilation is complete. They will only be needed again if the continuum binning within the code is changed.

Compiling only one of the star sets

Often only one or two of the sets of stellar atmospheres are needed, not the whole lot.   The only option on the compile stars command was introduced to make this possible.  Follow the instructions above, although you only need to get the files needed for the desired atmospheres.  Then execute the compile command with the only keyword, and another keyword identifying the stellar atmosphere, as follows:

compile only atlas stars
compile only werner stars
compile only rauch stars
compile only old rauch stars
compile only costar stars

The code will only try to read the indicated atmosphere, and produce only that mod file.

The resolution of the continuum mesh can be changed by changing the contents of the file continuum_mesh.dat in the data directory.  The code checks that the energy mesh within the compiled stellar atmosphere file agrees exactly with the code's internal grid, and will stop if they do not agree to within the machine precision.  If the continuum binning by changing continuum_mesh.dat then it will be necessary to recompile the star files, using the compile stars command.

Starburst 99

The code can read Starburst 99 files, and one of the sample cases in the test suite uses one.  These are generated for a specific circumstance, and these is no grid of results to download.  More details are available here, and in Part 1 of Hazy where the table starburst command is described.

Next step: run the test suite.

Last changed 11/04/06.
Return to the Cloudy Home Page.
Copyright 1978-2006 Gary J. Ferland