PHOENIX
PHOENIX is a state-of-the-art atmosphere code used to model a variety
of astrophysical atmospheres. The code is maintained by a large,
international, collaboration of astronomers who work on stars, planets, brown
dwarfs, white dwarfs, super novae, novae, giants, stellar winds, AGNs, etc.
The basic features of PHOENIX:
- solves the 1-D plane-parallel or spherically symmetric radiative transfer equation using
a fast, operator splitting algorithm for 50,000 to 500,000 frequency points (more if necessary).
- includes irradiation by a nearby companion.
- includes atomic, molecular, and condensate (liquid and solid) opacities, including millions of spectral lines.
- computes the number densities of roughly 1000 chemical species (atoms, molecules, condensates, and ions)
assuming chemical equilibrium for 40 astrophysically important elements.
- includes many non-LTE species.
- includes a parameterized cloud model for brown dwarfs and planets.
- capable of computing wind models for O stars and novae.
- and much much more.
Pictures of the PHOENIX developers
For small simulations, PHOENIX can be run on multi-cpu workstations. However, for larger
more intensive calculations, big clusters or real supercomputers must be used.
Top500 SuperComputers used to run PHOENIX:
Columbia (SGI Altix, 10160 processors) currently ranked #4
Seaborg (IBM SP Power 3, 6656 processors) currently ranged #48
Download PHOENIX models:
(note: ftp server maintained by Andres Schweitzer at Hamburg Observatory)
Other PHOENIX related web-pages:
