Acknowledgements

Blast is largely glue between already established software projects. It could not exist without them. If you use Blast, you must acknowledge and cite all of the following projects which Blast uses; a BibTeX file is available via the software page of our documentation. Blast is based upon work originally supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant No. 80NSSC21K0834 issued through the Astrophysics Data Analysis Program.

Currently Blast application development and operation of the public service are funded by:

nsf_logo.png

National Science Foundation Award #2510994
Research: The Connection between Astrophysical Transients and their Host Galaxies Across Cosmic Time
10/01/2025 — 09/30/2028

The public deployment of Blast at https://blast.scimma.org is built and maintained by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and it is hosted on cyberinfrastructure provided by the NSF ACCESS program.

Contributors

  • Peter McGill (University of California, Santa Cruz)
  • David Jones (University of Hawaiʻi)
  • T. Andrew Manning (NCSA, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
  • Lila Braff (University of California, Santa Cruz)
  • Dave Coulter (Space Telescope Science Institute)
  • Diego Farias (University of Copenhagen)
  • Ryan Foley (University of California, Santa Cruz)
  • Alex Gagliano (Institute For AI and Fundamental Interactions)
  • Jack Kutcka (University of California, Santa Cruz)
  • Zhisen Lai (University of California, Santa Cruz)
  • Kayla Loertscher (University of California, Santa Cruz)
  • Gautham Narayan (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
  • Stephen Thorp (Stockholm University)
  • Ashley Villar (Harvard University)
  • Bingjie Wang (Penn State University)
  • Rishabh Bezbarua (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Project Usage Repository Paper DOI Website
Astropy Used in almost all aspects of the project https://github.com/astropy/astropy ADS 10.3847/1538-3881/aabc4f https://www.astropy.org
NumPy Used in almost all aspects of the project https://github.com/numpy/numpy ADS 10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2 https://numpy.org
photutils Used for the host aperture photometry https://github.com/astropy/photutils ADS 10.5281/zenodo.6385735 https://photutils.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
Astroquery Used for gathering external data for transients https://github.com/astropy/astroquery ADS 10.3847/1538-3881/aafc33 https://astroquery.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
HiPS Used in the cutout generation https://github.com/hipspy/hips ADS 10.1051/0004-6361/201526075 https://hips.readthedocs.io
dynesty Used in the inference of host galaxy parameters https://github.com/joshspeagle/dynesty ADS 10.1093/mnras/staa278 https://dynesty.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Prospector Used in the inference of host galaxy parameters https://github.com/bd-j/prospector ADS 10.3847/1538-4365/abef67 https://prospect.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
sedpy Used in the inference of host galaxy parameters https://github.com/bd-j/sedpy ADS 10.5281/zenodo.4582723 https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019ascl.soft05026J/abstract
SVO Filter Profile Service Used in the inference of host galaxy parameters https://github.com/hover2pi/svo_filters ADS 10.5479/ADS/bib/2012ivoa.rept.1015R https://svo.cab.inta-csic.es/main/index.php
Python FSPS Used to generate spectra and magnitude for arbitrary stellar populations https://github.com/dfm/python-fsps/tree/v0.4.1rc1 ADS 10.5281/zenodo.4737461 https://dfm.io/python-fsps/current/
SBI Used in the inference of host galaxy parameters https://github.com/sbi-dev/sbi ADS 10.21105/joss.02505 https://sbi-dev.github.io/sbi/latest/
SBI++ Used in the inference of host galaxy parameters https://github.com/wangbingjie/sbi_pp ADS 10.3847/2041-8213/ace361 https://github.com/wangbingjie/sbi_pp
Prost Used to match transients to host galaxies https://github.com/alexandergagliano/Prost ADS https://astro-prost.readthedocs.io/