Installing ratran on a Unix system

  1. Download the distribution file by following this link. It is a good idea to check once in a while (say once a year) if any major updates have occurred. In that case you should update your version of Ratran. Click here for a revision overview.
     

    The standard version of Ratran assumes that the second collision partner has a much smaller mass than the first, as is the case for electrons versus H, H2, or He. However, sometimes the partners have similar or equal masses, as in the case of ortho and para H2. In this case, alternative versions of two amc subroutines are needed, which are found here. We thank Susanne Wampfler and Luis Chavarria for their input.

  2. Unzip and untar the distribution file. This will create a directory Ratran in your working  directory. In this new directory, run the "configure" script to install the program for your operating system. Currently recognized operating systems are Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and Darwin (Mac OSX). The Microsoft Windows system is not supported, although compiling and running the Fortran code under Windows is probably possible.


             > gunzip ratran_public.tar.gz
             > tar xf ratran_public.tar
             > cd Ratran
             > ./configure

        Do not simply type "configure" since this may call other, system-wide configure scripts. The only question that may come up is the name of your shell setup file, if it is not ".cshrc". Each user planning to use the program should run the ./configure script. The script can also be used to change platforms.
     

  3. To write its output in FITS format, the program needs the FITSIO library, which you can obtain from this URL. Click on "Get a Copy" and follow the instructions. When you have installed the library, put its location in the environment variable $CFITSIO.

  4. Alternatively, output can be written in MIRIAD format. To install MIRIAD, click here; note that only the SMA version of Miriad is Ratran compatible, and older versions (<2010) seem to give best results. To run SKY, it may be necessary to change the call to the Miriad libraries; see $RATRAN/sky/Makefile for details.

  5. The link `Running the Code' describes how to use `amc' and `sky'. Note that the executable of the code(s) will be compiled each time a calculation is done. This allows the sizes of arrays to be adjusted, saving memory, and, more importantly, allows user-defined velocity fields and opacity functions to be included.

  6. Molecular data files can be placed in the directory Ratran/molec. This is the location where amc and sky will look for data files if no path is provided in the keyword file. Such files must be in the format described at `Molecular data format'. The distribution already includes a molec directory with an example data file (hco+_example.dat).

  7. A simple example problem accompanies the distribution in the directory Ratran/example. It is invoked by
             > cd Ratran/example
             > amc amc.inp
             > sky sky.inp

        If Miriad is installed, the resulting spectrum can be plotted with, e.g.,

             > imspect device=/xs in=example_sky_01 region=arcsec,box'(10,-10,-10,10)'
     

       More information on image analysis in Miriad can be found at the link `Miriad image analysis'.