Installation

1. If not already present, install Python 3. Sator requires the following modules: tkinter, numpy, scipy, matplotlib, mpl_toolkits, h5py, ctypes. Depending on the version of Python you have installed, you might need to install some of these modules. I had to perform the following steps:
   • sudo apt-get install python3-pip
   • sudo apt-get install python3-tk
   • pip3 install numpy
   • pip3 install scipy
   • pip3 install matplotlib
   • pip3 install h5py
2. Git clone the repository to your favorite location
3. Set the environment variable DATA_DIR to point to the folder with the snapshot data. For example, the snapshot files of a simulation named test must be located in $DATA_DIR/test/, and the files must be named e.g. test_000 in that directory.
4. Copy par_template.txt to your own parameter file (e.g. par.txt) and set the parameters
5. Copy snap_fields_template.txt to your own snapshot fields file (e.g. snap_fields.txt) and define the fields in the snapshot for format 1 (Note: this is only necessary for snapshot format 1)
6. Start sator with ./sator.sh. In this case the parameter file name defaults to par.txt. If you are starting Sator for the first time, the C libraries will be compiled. If you want to use a different name for the parameter file, you can manually invoke sator with the command python3 main.py par_alt.txt, where par_alt.txt is the alternative name of the parameter file. You can also run sator in script mode. An example is given in the file script.py. You can run the script with python3 script.py.

Fields in Sator

In Sator there are two different kinds of fields: snapshot fields and refined fields. The former are fields as they exist in the snapshots, e.g. Coordinates in an HDF5 file. The refined fields are computed from the snapshot fields and are typically used for plots, for example the temperature (refined field temp). The temperature is computed from the snapshot fields InternalEnergy, Gamma and ChemicalAbundances, if the latter two are present in the snapshot. A new refined field, together with its dimensionality and data type, can be specified in settings.py. Its calculation from the snapshot fields is defined in fields.py in the routine get_refined_field.

For snapshot format 1, the snapshot fields, their properties and their order in the snapshot must be defined in a file specified by the parameter SnapFieldsFile in the paramater file.