Update to SKIRT v7.4

Major new features

Description	More info
There is a substantial update to SKIRT's multiprocessing capabilities, introducing data parallelization mode (with the -d command line option) and streamlining task parallelization mode	Using multiple processes and Parallelization
The support for polarization (through scattering by spherical dust grains) has matured and the sign conventions now fully match IAU recommendations	Polarization
The crop and cavity geometry decorators are replaced by clip decorators that perform both functions	ClipGeometryDecorator

Some of these changes require a ski file upgrade. For more information and relevant links, consult the SKIRT wiki pages.

Update to SKIRT v7.3

Major new features

Description	More info
Include the MAPPINGS III SED family for simulating star bursting H II regions	MappingsSEDFamily
Include dust properties for amorphous hydrocarbon, enstatite and forsterite	e.g. ThemisDustMix
Allow to Doppler-shift the emitted SEDs for SPH particles with velocity data	SPHStellarComp
Reorganize dust grids in a more flexible class hierarchy and support spatial domains that are not centered on the origin	Spatial grids
Use arbitrary "field of view" in frame instruments rather than origin-centered extents	SingleFrameInstrument
Add several options for memory usage logging and estimation	Command-line options
Introduce composite biasing in the photon package loop for a more optimal distribution of signal-to-noise	Baes et al., in prep
Support scattering of polarized radiation off dust grains throughout the code	Polarization in SKIRT

Some of these changes require a ski file upgrade. Some features require an extra download. For more information and relevant links, consult the SKIRT wiki pages.

Update to SKIRT v7.2

Major changes

• Support for MPI parallelization of a single SKIRT simulation. In MPI mode, shooting photon packages and calculating dust emission spectra is distributed over multiple nodes in a high-performance cluster, or multiple processes on the same computer. The latter setup offers improved performance even on shared memory systems, assuming there is sufficient system memory to accommodate the multiple SKIRT processes.
• A graphical user interface, called SkirtMakeUp, to create and edit SKIRT and FitSKIRT configurations (ski and ski files) in wizard style.
• Improvements to the documentation, including better navigation, a substantially expanded installation guide, a new user manual for FitSKIRT and the corresponding PTS tools, and new sections on parallelization.

More information

For more information and relevant links, consult the SKIRT wiki pages.

First public release

SKIRT 7.1 is the first public release of the SKIRT source code.

Major changes since SKIRT 6

• New environment
  • move to GitHub (supporting open source collaboration)
  • move to Qt 5.2 (which is compatible with Mac OS X 10.9) and Qt Creator 3.0
  • move to C++11 (so that we can begin to use the language extensions)
  • remove the DustEM Fortran code (and thus the option to use DustEM for dust emission calculations)
• Build process
  • each subdirectory is a separate subproject that creates a “library” (or an executable at the top level)
  • SKIRT and FitSKIRT are part of a single “tree” of subprojects
  • changes to the SKIRT project are thus automatically adopted by the FitSKIRT project
  • circular dependencies between libraries are automatically detected (since no longer possible)
  • changes in SKIRT that would break the FitSKIRT build are now automatically detected
  • include the code for cfitsio in the build tree, removing all external dependencies except for Qt
  • include the code for the DoxStyle source comments streamliner in the build tree
  • provide unique git "version number" in welcome message (replacing svn version number)
  • update the scripts for building Qt and SKIRT, and for building and publishing the documentation
    (on desktops use Qt Creator; on servers use "make" shell script)
• New features
  • incorporate dust grain compositions for Forsterite, Enstatite, and Min's amorphous silicates