Fit rotation model

Here is a little introduction to the process of fitting a rotation model to a velocity field. IFSCube has a program for that called fit_rotation, which takes a velocity field from a FITS file and attempts to fit the disk rotation model described in Bertola 1991.

In the examples directory there is a configuration file for fit_rotation. After installation the program should be available at your path, so that you can call it by entering the following in a terminal, from within the examples directory.

fit_rotation rotation.ini

This command assumes that you have already run the cube fitting example with the data for NGC3081.

Configuration file

The parameters in the configuration file are directly translated in to arguments for the methods of the ifscube.rotation.Rotation class.

general

  • fit: bool
    If yes fits the data, if no just builds a model with the parameters given in the section model.

loading

  • input_data: str
    Name of the input FITS file containing the velocity field data.
  • extension: str or int
    Name or number of the extension in case of a multi-extension FITS file.
  • plane: int
    Plane of the velocity field, in case of data cube.

model

The model parameters are equal to those of Bertola et al. 1991, except for x_0 and y_0. All angles should be given in degrees.

  • amplitude: float
    Amplitude of the velocity field.
  • x_0: float
    Horizontal coordinate of the rotation center.
  • y_0: float
    Vertical coordinate of the rotation center.
  • phi_0: float
    Angle of the line of nodes.
  • c_0: float
    Concentration index.
  • p: float
    p parameter.
  • theta: float
    Inclination angle of the disk with respect to the plane of the sky.

bounds

For each parameter of the last section a pair of bounds can be set in this section, repeating the parameter name and given lower and upper bounds separated by a comma.

[bounds]
theta = 30, 60

fixed

Parameters can also be set to be fixed, by writing the parameter name in this section followed by a ‘yes’.

[fixed]
x_0 = 'yes'
y_0 = 'yes'