FAQ

This section tries to answer some common questions about socca.

Why socca?

As already mentioned in the introduction, the core design of socca is inspired by existing and more mature tools galfit, astrophot, and pysersic, which have clearly demonstrated the power and flexibility of the modular approach to image fitting.

Still, my day-to-day use of these libraries made me realize the lack of some (or a combination of) features that have been essential to analysis workflow. The most important among these are the native JAX integration, a direct interface to nested sampling algorithms for enabling accurate Bayesian model selection, and a flexible framework for defining complex prior probabilities.

socca has been built to address all this, with the core idea of providing a library that is simple, modular, and extensible.

Why “socca”?

I (@lucadimascolo) started developing this library while working at Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France. Socca is a traditional dish from Nice made from chickpea flour, water, olive oil, and salt (source: Wikipedia, as well as all the socca I personally ate at Chez Thérésa at the Marché aux Fleurs). I chose the name “socca” to acknowledge the roots of the project in Nice and the lively scientific environment that shaped its early development. In a way, though, the name also conveys the idea of simplicity in modelling astronomical data: minimal ingredients, no unnecessary complexity, and a result that is both robust and satisfying—much like socca itself.