Image Source.

Stefano (while in the midst of writing his astrophysics thesis in Bologna!) has somehow found the time to implement a whole slew of very cool improvements to the Systemic back end. New aspects include a search function, a personal “fits” library, and a variety of interactive features designed to aid collaboration and make the user experience more rewarding.

We’re working on a full user manual for both the downloadable console and the back end, but in the meantime, we’re really urging users to (1) download the console, (2) create a free account on the back end, (3) work through the systemic console tutorials one, two, and three, (4) upload fits, and (5) start collaborating. There are a number of real systems in the star catalog which can be profitably characterized and improved. I’m also very interested to see what people come up with for the datasets systemic001 and systemic002.

Do give it a try, and please give us feedback, either in the comments section on the back-end, or in the comments section for this post.

Two tips: (1) For Mac-users, Firefox provides a better interface to the back-end than does Safari. (2) At the moment, the user-interface looks better if you resize to a wider browser window.