My Work
My current research interest is in the analysis of the spatial distribution of satellite galaxies and their relation to current cosmological models.
I wrote my diploma thesis about the "DIVA proper motion Link". Unfortunatly the DIVA mission was cancelled in Feb. 2003.
Refereed Publications
- Metz, M.; Kroupa, P.; Theis, C.; Hensler, G. & Jerjen, H., 2009, acc ApJ, arXiv:0903.0375
"Did the Milky Way satellites enter the halo as a group?" - Metz, M.; Kroupa, P. & Jerjen, H., 2009, acc MNRAS, arXiv:0901.1658
"Discs of Satellites: the new dwarf spheroidals" - Metz, M.; Kroupa, P. & Libeskind, N. I., 2008, ApJ, 680, 287; arXiv:0802.3899
"The Orbital Poles of Milky Way Satellite Galaxies: A Rotationally Supported Disc-of-Satellites" - Metz, M. & Kroupa, P., 2007, MNRAS, 376, 387; astro-ph/0701289
"Dwarf-spheroidal satellites: are they of tidal origin?" - Metz, M.; Kroupa, P. & Jerjen, H., 2007, MNRAS, 374, 1125; astro-ph/0610933
"The spatial distribution of the Milky Way and Andromeda satellite galaxies" - Metz, M.; Geffert, M., 2004, A&A, 413, 771-777; astro-ph/0309780
"Formalism and quality of a proper motion link with extragalactic objects for astrometric satellite missions"
See also my publications at the Astrophysics Data System (ADS).
Software
Here you will find some software routines I have written for astronomical applications.
- libHyperBox:
I have developed a high-performance particle-mesh code for galactic dynamics simulations, fully
implemented in C++. In the current development stage it outperforms a comparable Fortran code by a factor
of 4, is more flexible than the original code, and will be integrateable in simulation frameworks,
that are based on Python, soon.
A GPU accelerated
version is also available (see also the AstroGPU
webpage, a workshop at the IAS in Princeton which I attended in November 2007),
which gives you another performance boost. Most recently we got support by the
"NVIDIA Professor Partnership Program".
I have written and maintain software that is currently used to operate the 1m telescope at the Hoher List observatory of the Argelander-Institut. The main components are:
- HoLiCS II: The Hoher List Control System is the main component to operate the 1m telescope, controlling the tracking of the telescope. The software was upgraded in the last few years to also control several sub-systems that were subsequently attached to the telescope, such as mirror- and dome-control microprocessors. Currently, we are developing a software package that will allow to operate the telescope remote and robotic. HoLiCS II is written in C++; network server and client components are python powered.
HoLiWS: The Hoher List Weather-information Software
is a linux daemon that continuously reads-out weather information of a weather-station and
makes this information available via a SOAP
web service. There is also a GUI application available to display the actual weather information.
HoLiWS and it's GUI were written in Python, the
GUI using the GTK+ toolkit.
The data is used to continuesly monitor weather conditions at the Observatory, see Hoher List Local Weather Station (internal access only).
And here is finally an open source project I work on: matplotlib, a Python-based plotting tool. I mainly contributed to user interface plotting functions, like the histogram or the scatter functions.
Python Sources
- A xmlrpc Transport class supporting Keep-Alive and compression.
- Calculate the angle between vectors.
- Generate random vectors on a sphere.
Private stuff
- Hiking tour in the scotish highlands
- Photos of the IAUC198 in Les Diablerets
