SETI-EIRP Comparison Plot Generator 👽📡

This package provides a command-line tool and Python library for plotting historical and modern SETI survey limits in the EIRP–rarity parameter space, as seen in most recent SETI survey papers. As shown below!

Installation

You can install the package using pip:

git clone https://github.com/ojohnson/SETI-EIRP-Comparison-Plot.git
cd SETI-EIRP-Comparison-Plot
pip install -e . 

An editable install (-e) is recommended for changing the plot itself as the style will be specific to each use case.

Usage

The most basic usage is to run the command-line tool with the default survey data:

seti-eirp --no-show

This will generate a plot using the default surveys.yaml file included in the package, and save it in the current working directory without displaying it. To see further more basic options, run seti-eirp -h.

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i INPUT, --input INPUT
                        Input YAML file with survey definitions (default: surveys.yaml)
  -o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
                        Output filename for the plot (default: SETI-EIRP-limits-Comp.pdf)
  -pub, --publish       Format the plot for publication using scienceplots.
  --twocolumn           Format the plot for two-column layout.
  --no-show             Do not display the plot interactively.

Calculating or adding new surveys via .yaml

There are two means to add survey data to the plot, either by calculating the EIRP and rarity values manually, or by using the built-in calculator.

1. Computed Surveys: To use the built-in calculator, add a new survey entry to the surveys.yaml file with the required parameters (e.g., dish diameter, system temperature, bandwidth, etc.). The script will compute the EIRP and rarity values based on these inputs.

- name: "Example Survey (2000)"
  point_type: "computed"
  N_stars: 500
  band_Hz: 100000000.0
  central_freq_Hz: 1500000000.0
  dish_diam_m: 64
  dish_Tsys_K: 35
  aperture_efficiency: 0.7
  SNR_threshold: 10
  spectral_resolution_Hz: 1.0
  obs_time_s: 300
  instantaneous_bandwidth_Hz: 1000000
  max_distance_ly: 300
  npol: 2
  narrow: false
  marker: "o"
  color: "red"
  markersize: 16

2. Fixed Surveys: To add a survey with pre-calculated EIRP and rarity values, use the fixed point type and provide the logEIRP and logRarity fields directly. These appear exactly where specified in the scatter plot

- name: "Johnson et al. (2023)"
  point_type: "fixed"
  logEIRP: 16.9
  logRarity: -5.8
  marker: "*"
  color: "lime"
  edgecolor: "black"
  markersize: 18

References

There is also an included surveys.bib file with as many of the relevant references as I could gather for the surveys included in the default surveys.yaml. Please cite appropriately if you use this code or the resulting plots in your work! Also feel free to open a PR if you want your survey added to the default list.