CfunBASE: A Cosmological Functions Library for Astronomical Databases
Manuchehr Taghizadeh-Popp · Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific · 2010
CfunBASE is a customizable C# cosmological functions library in the .NET framework. Its primary use is in CasJobs/SkyServer, where the functions are ported into a MS-SQL Server database hosting the SDSS science archive, and can be executed through simple T-SQL commands. This gives cloud-computing users the possibility of calculating cosmological distances, volumes and times as a function of redshift, as well as their respective inverse functions. Also included are basic data exploratory analysis tools, such as binning, N-dimensional weighted histograms, and quantile and cumulative distribution aggregate functions. Advanced astronomical examples are presented and discussed, such as the T-SQL implementation and fast computation of luminosity functions, color-magnitude diagrams, and the friends-of-friends galaxy cluster identification algorithm.