AASTeX v6.0 Author Guide

The first piece of markup in the manuscript declares the overall style of the document. Any commands that appear before this markup will be ignored.

\documentclass{aastex6}

This specifies the document class as aastex with the default style (onecolumn). The manuscript copy produced by this style is a tight typeset, single column format. Other substyles are available. They are discussed in greater detail in Section 3.

AASTeX allows authors to define their own commands with L^aT_eX’s \newcommand. (Authors should not use the plain TeX \def command in AAS journal submissions.) Authors’ \newcommand definitions must be placed in the document preamble.

In general, author-defined commands that are abbreviations or shorthands are acceptable and can be easily handled by journal offices and publishers during data conversion; for example:

\newcommand{\grb}{gamma ray burst}

\newcommand{\bHa}{Broad line H{\alpha}}

However, abbreviations that attempt to define new symbols by using L^aT_eX commands for repositioning text tend to cause problems in the publication process and should be avoided. In particular, author-defined commands that use any of the commands listed below are apt to cause problems during data conversion.

\hskip, \vskip, \raise, \raisebox, \lower, \rlap, \kern, \lineskip, \char, \mathchar, \mathcode, \buildref, \mathrel, \baselineskip

Consequently, authors are strongly discouraged from using them.

Extra symbols are defined for AASTeX, some specifically for an astronomical context, others more broadly used in math and physics. In particular, the AMS has additional symbol fonts that are available in a standard L^aT_eX package (amssymb). All of these symbols are depicted in the additional symbols tables supplied with the package and on the AASTeX website.

Before defining a new symbol command, authors are advised to consult these tables to see whether the symbol they need already exists. If it does, they should use the corresponding markup command. Authors should not redefine existing command names. When one of these commands is encountered in an electronic manuscript submitted to a journal, an author’s redefinition will be ignored and the originally-defined command used.

A number of markup commands are available for to timestamp important dates during the peer review process to document the publication history. These commands are not required as this information is pulled from the peer review database after acceptance and inserted by the publisher during production. Authors may find these commands useful for arXiv submissions.

\received{receipt date}

\revised{revision date}

\accepted{acceptance date}

Authors who wish to include a short remark on the title page, such as the name and date of the journal to which an article has been submitted, may do so with the following command.

\slugcomment{text}

These comments appear at the upper right corner of the title page.

An optional water mark can be superimposed over the title page using the following commands.

\watermark{text}

\setwatermarkfontsize{dimension}

The first command will print text in a light gray color on the title page running diagonally from the bottom left to the top right. The font size can also be specified by the second command, e.g. 2in, to obtain the appropriate size. Authors may have to experiment with the wording and font size to obtain a desired result. The water mark information is not used during production but authors might find it useful to identify drafts or preprints.

Authors may supply optional running head information using the following commands.

 \shorttitle{text}

 \shortauthors{text}

Two different kinds of data are generally supplied in running heads. A shortened author list (last names, possibly truncated as “et al.”) appears at the top of even-numbered pages while an abbreviated form of the manuscript title appears on the top of odd-numbered pages. The information in these commands will be passed through to copy editing staff for inclusion in the published version but only the short authors information will be shown in the html.

The information contained within these commands should be brief. A good rule of thumb is to limit the list of authors to three or else use “et al.,” and to limit the short form of the title to 40-45 characters. The editors may choose to modify the author-supplied running heads.

The preferred method for reference management is to use L^aT_eX‘s thebibliography environment, marking citations in the body of the manuscript with \citep or \citet and associating references with them using \bibitem. The \cite-\bibitem mechanism associates citations and references symbolically while maintaining proper citation syntax within the manuscript. In the \bibitem command, the author should specify citation data inside square brackets and a citation key in curly braces for each reference. (The bibitem command is described in detail in the next section.)

   \begin{thebibliography}{dummy}

   \bibitem[cite data]{key} bibliographic data

   .

   .

  \end{thebibliography}

Note that the argument dummy to the start command of the environment is not used in the AASTeX package, but it is included to be consistent with the syntax of standard L^aT_eX. It is acceptable to simply insert an empty pair of curly braces at the end of the \begin{thebibliography} command.

AASTeX uses the natbib package for citation management. The natbib package re-implements L^aT_eX’s cite command, offering greater flexibility for managing citations in the author-year form. Specific instructions on how to use natbib is available here.

When using natbib, bibliographic data are defined in bibitem commands.

   \bibitem[author(year)]{key}

     bibliographic data

The square-bracketed argument of the bibitem contains the author portion of the citation followed by the year set off in parentheses. The parentheses are important-natbib uses them to determine the year portion of the citation-so be sure to include them. The argument key in curly braces is the code name by which the citation is referenced in the text.

When placing citations in the text, the author should use either a citep or a citet command.

\citep{key(s)} \citet{key(s)}

The citep command produces a citation that is entirely set off by parentheses, e.g. “(Cox 1995),” while citet permits the author’s name to form part of the text, e.g. “Cox (1995).” The plain L^aT_eX cite command behaves like citet.

The citation key must correspond to the key in a bibitem command. During processing, information from the square-bracketed argument of the key’s bibitem is inserted in the text at the location of the \cite command. Multiple citation keys are separated by commas, e.g., citep{knuth84,cox95,lamport94}.

citep and citet each take optional arguments that specify extra text to be appended to the citation label. Text in the first set of square brackets will appear before the cite while text in the second set will appear after it. For instance, citep[chap. 2]{jon90} would produce the citation “(Jones et al., 1990, chap. 2),” citep[see][]{jon90} would produce “(see Jones et al, 1990),” and citep[see][chap. 2]{jon90} would print “(see Jones et al., 1990, chap. 2).” In addition, the * form of the cite commands will print the full author list instead of the abbreviated form.

The syntax discussed above should be sufficient for the vast majority of cases; however, AASTeX does use the full natbib implementation, so many more syntax options are available.

Authors are also encourage to use reference management software such as BibTex to organize their references and produce correct bibliographies. When using BibTeX a .bst file is need to produce the proper reference output that follows the AAS Journal’s format. Authors should use the new aasjournal.bst file when using BibTex with AAS Journal manuscripts.

It is not possible to use \bibitem within AASTeX’s references environment ( 2.14.3), nor will \cite commands work properly in the main body if \bibitem commands are absent.

Some authors might prefer to enter citations directly into the body of an article. If so, the references environment may be used to format the reference list. The references environment simply sets off the list of references and adjusts spacing parameters.

\begin{references}

\reference{key} bibliographic data

   .

   .

\end{references}

While the references environment remains supported in AASTeX, we anticipate that authors will prefer the stronger capabilities of the standard LaTeX thebibliography commands as extended by natbib.

AASTeX commands for journal abbreviations have been deprecated. Authors are encouraged to use standard journal abbreviations defined by ADS.

The AAS Journals encourages authors to include data with their articles. In many cases this data can be included with the article, see Section 2.17, but sometimes the data is either too large or too complex to include. In these cases the AAS Journals recommend the author place their data in a trusted 3rd party repository that issues Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and properly cite the data in the bibliography. Likewise software and code in persistent repositories should also be linked to the main journal by DOI. The new policy statement on software can be found here.

The format for referencing digital objects in repositories is as follows:

{author*} {year}, {title}, {version^}, {publisher|howpublished~}, {prefix}:{identifier#}

To illustrate and document this format, we use a corresponding BibTeX entry taken and modified from a real example). Note that all data/software BibTeX entries should be of the @misc type:

@misc{lia_corrales_2015_15991,
author       = {Lia Corrales},
title        = {{dust: Calculate the intensity of dust scattering halos in the X-ray}},
month        = mar,
year         = 2015,
doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.15991},
version      = {1.0},
publisher    = {Zenodo},
url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15991}
} 

The corresponding reference entry should look like:

Corrales, L. 2015a, dust: Calculate the intensity of dust scattering halos in the X-ray, v1.0, Zenodo, doi:10.5281/zenodo.15991

BibTeX will produce a citation in this format when the new aasjournal.bst file is used. The aasjournal.bst is an update of the old apj.bst file and is backwards compatible.

If an author wishes to embed graphics in a manuscript, it is necessary that the graphics files conform to either the Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) or PDF standard. Use a package like epstopdf to convert EPS files to PDF if using pdflatex or a mixture of figure formats.

Several commands are available for including EPS/PDF files in AASTeX manuscripts. They should be placed within the figure environment.

\begin{figure}

\figurenum{text}

\epsscale{num}

\plotone{file}

\plottwo{file1}{file2}

\caption{text}

\end{figure}

In the onecolumn style the figure will span the same width of the text. Figures in the twocolumn style will likewise only span the column they are placed in. An author can override this by adding an asterisk, e.g. \begin{figure*}…\end{figure*}, to have a figure span both columns. Authors are responsible for producing figures that are not so small to be unreadable.

When \figurenum is specified inside the figure environment, the text supplied as an argument to \figurenum will be used as the figure identifier. L^aT_eX’s figure counter is not incremented when \figurenum is used. \figurenum must be used inside the figure environment.

\plotone inserts the graphic in the named EPS/PDF file, scaled so that the horizontal dimension fits the width of the body text; the vertical dimension is scaled to maintain the aspect ratio. \plottwo inserts two image files next to each other. Scale factors are determined automatically from information in the EPS/PDF file.

The automatic scaling may be overridden with the command \epsscale{num}, where num is a scaling factor in decimal units, e.g., 0.80.

The plotone and plottwo macros are invocations of the graphicx \includegraphics command. In most instances, using plotone or plottwo should work for placing figures in AASTeX documents. However, if more flexibility is needed, the includegraphics command may be invoked directly. For instance, to rotate an image by 90 degrees, use

\includegraphics[angle=90]{epsfile}

See the graphicx wiki page or package documentation for more information about \includegraphics.

All electronic art in a manuscript must have a figure caption or legend. The \caption command within the figure environment is the most commonly used method but AASTeX also supports \figcaption which has similar functionality.

\caption{text\label{key}}

\figcaption[filename]{text\label{key}}

The optional argument, filename, can be used to identify the file for the corresponding figure; text refers to the caption for that figure. The author may provide a \label with a unique key for cross-referencing purposes.

When either the \caption or \figcaption commands are used, the figure identification label, e.g., “Figure 1,” is generated automatically by the command itself, so there is no need to key this information. There is an upper limit of seven, figure captions per page. Footnotes are not supported for figures.

AASTeX 6.0 introduces a new way to create a figure that consists of > 2 EPS or PDF files arranged in a grid pattern. The new command \gridline allows an author to place as many figure files as needed in a row through multiple \fig, \rightfig and \leftfig calls. The \fig calls an individual EPS or PDF file while \rightfig and \leftfig do the same but right and left justify the named file within the grid row. There is also the \boxedfig call which is the same as \fig but draws a box around the named file.

\fig{filename}{width}{letter or caption}

The first argument is the EPS or PDF file to be displayed. The second argument is the width to scale the file by. Any LaTeX accepted width is valid but author may find it easier to use \textwidth scale the figure by a fraction of the allowed width. For example, 0.33\textwidth will scale the figure to one-third the column width. The last argument provides a sub caption beneath the displayed file. Authors should use this to label the displayed file, e.g. “(a)”, “(b)”, etc.

There is a final file call for \gridline, \rotatefig. Similar to the others, this file call takes an additional argument to specify the degree of rotation. An example would be \rotatefig{90}{filename}{width}{subcaption} to produce a 90 degree rotation.

With multiple \gridline commands an author can construct figures consisting of numerous files and in complex arrangements. The following example will create a 2 X 3 grid that is labeled “(a)” through “(f)” but another example is available in the sample.tex file that is included with the AASTeX 6.0 download package.

\begin{figure}

\gridline{\fig{fig1a.eps}{0.3\textwidth}{(a)}

          \fig{fig1b.eps}{0.3\textwidth}{(b)}

          \fig{fig1c.eps}{0.3\textwidth}{(c)}}

\gridline{\fig{fig1d.eps}{0.3\textwidth}{(d)}

          \fig{fig1e.eps}{0.3\textwidth}{(e)}

          \fig{fig1f.eps}{0.3\textwidth}{(f)}}

\caption{This is the caption for a nice two by three file figure.}

\end{figure}

Authors are encouraged to use the deluxetable environment to format their tables since it automatically handles many formatting tasks, including table numbering and insertion of horizontal rules. It also provides mechanisms for breaking tables and controlling width and vertical spacing that are unavailable in the L^aT_eX tabular environment. An online tool is available to help create deluxetables.

The deluxetable environment is delimited by L^aT_eX’s familiar \begin and \end constructs. The content consists of preamble commands and table data, the latter delimited by \startdata and \enddata.

\begin{deluxetable}{cols}

preamble commands

\startdata

table data

\enddata

\end{deluxetable}

The argument cols specifies the justification for each column. An alignment token, “l,” “c,” or “r,” is given for each column, indicating flush left, centered, or flush right.

The deluxetable environment uses the longtable package to split tables over pages. Unfortunately, this means that deluxetable are not traditional floats and thus L^aT_eX does not have its normal flexibility to optimally typeset the table within the article. Instead L^aT_eX will insert the deluxetable where it is placed with in the manuscript. Extra care may be necessary to achieve the desired placement results. An author can force a deluxetable to be a float by adding the command \floattable before the \begin{deluxetable} command. Note that no L^aT_eX float object can break over a page so the \floattable command should not be used for long tables that exceed a page length.

When it is necessary to place a long deluxetable on a separate page use \newpage prior to the table start. If the twocolumn mode is used L^aT_eX will continue to place the table in one column. For tables wider than a double column, using the command \onecolumngrid will ensure that the table spans both columns.

\onecolumngrid

\newpage

\begin{deluxetable} ... \end{deluxetable}

There are several commands in the deluxetable environment that must be given in the preamble if used.

\tabletypesize{font size command}

\rotate

\tablewidth{dimen}

\tablenum{text}

\tablecolumns{num}

\tablecaption{text\label{key}}

\tablehead{text}

If a table is too wide for the PDF page, the font size of the table can be changed with the \tabletypesize command, which takes as an argument one of the font size change commands: \small (11pt), \footnotesize (10pt), or \scriptsize (8pt).

To force a table to be set in landscape orientation, use the \rotate command. Note that only float tables can be rotated so prepend \floattable to the beginning of each deluxetable to be placed in landscape mode. This means that long tables that must break over a page can not be rotated in AASTeX. In these cases please consider the Machine-readable table with a short example instead. Finally, most DVI previewer tools will not properly render rotated deluxetable output, so in order to see what the table looks like, it must be converted to EPS or PDF and viewed there.

The width of a deluxetable is defined by \tablewidth. If this command is omitted, the default width is the width of the page. The table can be set to its natural width by specifying a dimension of 0pt. Long tables may have a natural width that is different for each page. The natural width for each page will be printed to the log file during processing. Authors may then use this log information to define a fixed table width in order to give the table a more uniform appearance across pages.

It is possible to override L^aT_eX‘s automatic numbering within the deluxetable environment. When \tablenum is specified inside a deluxetable preamble, the text supplied as an argument to \tablenum will be used as the table identifier. L^aT_eX‘s equation counter is not incremented when \tablenum is used.

The caption (actually, the title) of the table is specified in \tablecaption. The text of \tablecaption should be brief; explanatory notes should be specified in the end notes to the table (see 2.16.5 below). If the caption does not appear centered above the table after processing, then specify the width of the table explicitly with the \tablewidth command and rerun L^aT_eX on the file. If an author supplies a \label for cross-referencing purposes, this, too, should be included in the \tablecaption.

Column headings are specified with \tablehead. Within the \tablehead, each column heading should be given in a \colhead, which will ensure that the heading is centered on the natural width of the column. There should be a heading for each column so that there are as many \colhead commands in the \tableheadas there are data columns.

\tablehead{

\colhead{heading} & \colhead{heading}}

If more complicated column headings are required, any valid tabular command that constitutes a proper head line in a L^aT_eX table may be used. For example, the multicolumn command below would create a table head with text centered over five columns.

\multicolumn{5}{c}{text}

The \tablecolumns{num} command is necessary if an author has multi-line column headings produced by \tablehead or other L^aT_eX commands and is using either the \cutinhead or \sidehead markup (see below). The num argument should be set to the true number of columns in the table. The command must come before the \startdata command.

After the table title and column headings have been specified, data rows can be entered. Data rows are delimited with the \startdata and \enddata commands. The end of each row is indicated with the standard L^aT_eX \\ command. Data cells within a row are separated with & (ampersand) characters.

\startdata

data line

cell&cell&cell \\

more data lines

\enddata

Column alignment within the data columns can be adjusted with the TeX \phantom{string} command, where string can be any character, e.g., \phantom{$\arcmin$}. A blank character of width string is then inserted in the table. Four commands have been predefined for this purpose.

\phn	phantom numeral 0-9
\phd	phantom decimal point
\phs	phantom ? sign
\phm{string}	generic phantom

Extra vertical space can be inserted between rows with an optional argument to the \\ command.

\\[dimen]

The argument is a dimension and may be specified in any units that are legitimate in L^aT_eX.

In a table, it may happen that several rows of data are associated with a single object or item. Such logical groupings should not be broken across pages. In these cases, the tablebreak command may be used to force a page break at the desired point.

table row

 \\tablebreak

next table row

This command can be used any time that the default deluxetable page breaks need to be overridden.

To explicitly indicate that a table cell that contain no data, the \nodata command can be used. This is to differentiate such cells from blank cells, which are frequently interpreted as implicitly repeating the entry in the corresponding cell in the row preceding.

Within the deluxetable body, two kinds of special heads are allowed, cutinhead and sidehead. A cut-in head is a piece of text centered across the width of the table. It is spaced above and below from the data rows that precede and follow it and will appear set off by rules in the L^aT_eX output. Similarly, the command for a side head produces a row spanning the width of the table but with the text left justified.

\cutinhead{text}

\sidehead{text}

Table footnotes (more properly, table end notes) may also be used in the deluxetable environment. Their use is described in detail in Section 2.16.5.

Authors may also compose tables using the table environment.

\begin{table}

\end{table}

The table environment encloses not only the tabular material but also any title or footnote information associated with the table.

Titles, or captions, for tables are indicated with a caption command

\caption{text\label{key}}

A table label, e.g. “Table 2,” is generated automatically by \caption. The author may provide a \label in the caption with a unique keyfor cross-referencing purposes.

The table body should appear within the tabular environment.

\begin{tabular}{cols}

\end{tabular}

The alignment tokens in cols specify the justification for each column. The letters “l,” “c,” or “r” is given for each column, indicating left, center, or right justification. See the wiki for additional information about using the tabular environment to prepare tables.

Each tabular table must appear within a table environment. There should be only one tabular table per table environment.

Use the tableline command to insert horizontal rules in the tabular environment.

\tableline

The use of vertical rules should be avoided.

As with the deluxetable environment, it is possible to override L^aT_eX’s automatic numbering within the table environment using \tablenum. \tablenum must be used inside the table environment.

To rotate a table into landscape mode in the table environment the following commands should be used

\begin{rotatetable}

\end{rotatetable}

around the \begin{tabular} … \end{tabular} calls.

AASTeX supports footnotes and end notes within tables; this support applies to both the deluxetable environment and the standard L^aT_eX table environment.

Footnotes for tables are usually identified by lowercase letters rather than numbers. Use the tablenotemark and tablenotetext commands to supply table footnotes. As with \altaffilmark and \altaffiltext, a note label, usually a letter, is required.

\tablenotemark{key letter(s)}

\tablenotetext{alpha key}{text}

The key letter of the tablenotemark should be the same as the alpha key for the corresponding text. It is the responsibility of the author to make the correspondence correct.

Sometimes authors tabulate materials that have corresponding references and may want to associate these references with the table. Authors may also wish to append a short paragraph of explanatory notes that pertain to the entire table. These elements should be specified with the commands below.

\tablerefs{reference list}

\tablecomments{text}

The \tablenotetext, \tablecomments, and \tablerefs commands must be specified after the \end{tabular} or \enddata and before the closing \end{table} or \end{deluxetable}.

AASTeX 6.0 introduces five new features to make and display tabular information. The author must have the most current AASTeX classfile in order to use these features. All of these features can be use together in a single table. Examples are available in the AASTeX 6.0 documentation.

Entire columns can be “hidden” from display with the use of the new “h” cols column identifier. For example the L^aT_eX table environment

\begin{tabular}{chc}

\hline

one & two & three\\

\hline

\hline

a & b & c\\

\hline

\end{tabular}

or AASTeX deluxetable environment

\begin{deluxetable}{chc}

\tablehead{

\colhead{one} & \nocolhead{two} & \colhead{three}

}

\startdata

a&b&c\\

\enddata

\end{deluxetable}

will only display columns “one” and “three”. The second column, “two”, will not be shown when compiled. In deluxetable the command \nocolhead has to be used instead of \colhead to hide a specific column header. Alternatively, \multicolumn1c can also be used to hide a header in deluxetable. Note that the hidden column still appears in the L^aT_eX manuscript. Authors are responsible for removing any unneeded column data or alerting the editorial office about how to treat these columns in during production for the final typeset article.

The use of mathematics and special symbols requires the use of math-mod or in other words prefaced with $s. Using capital letters, e.g. “C”, “L”, or “R”, in the cols column identifier will set that specific column in math mode so that $s are unnecessary. A L^aT_eX table environment example is shown below.

\begin{tabular}{cCR}

\hline

one&two&\alpha\\

\hline

\hline

a & \sum^{n=0}_{0 \to 1} & 5\pm1\\

\hline

\end{tabular}

An another example but with AASTeX’s deluxetable.

\begin{deluxetable}{ClR}

\tablhead{

\colhead{Math} & \dcolhead{\beta} & \colhead{3} \\

\stardata

\frac{a}{b} & 1000 & $\sim a^{\prime}$ \\

\enddata

\end{deluxetable}

As shown in the second column header the command \dcolhead is used to enable math mode without $s in the header. The last column in the deluxetable shows that embedded $s will not affect capital cols and thus legacy tables can be used without worry.

Aligning columns by decimal can be tricky. Prior to AASTeX 6.0 the best way was to use phantom calls such as \phn to manually align each row. For long or wide tables this process can add significant overhead to get the decimals to align properly. AASTeX 6 introduces another new cols column identifier, “D”, to automatically align a column by decimal. While the process is similar for both L^aT_eX tables and AASTeX deluxetables the details are slightly different.

The process works by splitting a decimal column into two separate columns by the decimal and right justifying the first new column and right justifying the second new column. In addition to identifying the decimal column with a “D” in the cols column identifier, the author must include the \decimals call in the table. Since “D” columns are actually two column any headers should include an extra “&” in the L^aT_eX tabular environment or be described with the new \twocolhead{} in the deluxetables environment. Alternatively, \multicolumn2c will work to span two columns in a header in either environment. Each decimal column must end with space before “&” and empty decimal columns must be indicated with a period (‘.’). A L^aT_eX example is given below.

\begin{tabular}{rDD}

\hline

 & & & \multicolumn2c{More} \\

Column & \multicolumn2c{Decimals} & \multicolumn2c{Decimals}\\

\hline

\hline

\decimals

One   & 567.0 & 21345 \\

Two   & 2.0   & 62.5  \\

Three & 45    & 534.3499 \\

Four  & 21.12 & .  \\

\hline

\end{tabular}

A similar example using AASTeX deluxetable and embedded plus or minus symbols to highlight the differences is given below.

\begin{deluxetable*}{cD@{+/-}D}

\tablehead{

\colhead{Letter} & \multicolumn2c{Value} & \multicolumn2c{Error} \\

}

\decimals

\startdata

A & 1234     & 100.0     \\

B &  123.4   &  10.1     \\

C &  12.34   &   1.01    \\

D &   1.234  &   0.101   \\

E &    .1234 &   0.01001 \\

\enddata

\end{deluxetable*}

Note that the \decimals call comes before \startdata in deluxetable.

Wide tables can easily be split horizontally into two or three continuing subtables. An author would invoke splittabular or splitdeluxetable to allow this functionality. Both command take the optional “*” extension to allow the table to span both columns in the twocolumn format. A new “B” cols column identifier is defined to tell L^aT_eX where to introduce the split. Up to two “B” identifiers can be used. The output is a centered split table with a full horizontal line separating the two or three components. A L^aT_eX table example below shows how this split a simple table into halves.

\begin{splittabular}{cccBccc}

\hline

one & two & three &four & five & six \\

$alpha$ & $\beta$ & $\gamma$ & $\delta$ & $\epsilon$ & $\zeta$ \\

\end{splittabular}

splitdeluxetable works in the same way and both will accept any of these calls in the table cols column identifier: c,l,r, or C,L,R, @{}, p{1in}, |, or ||, m{}, b{}, !{}, or a new column type defined with the \newcolumntype{}{} command. Note that tables should only be split as a the regular tricks of using landscape and smaller fonts do not provide the desired results.

The command \colnumbers can be included to automatically number each column in the header. The command works with all table types including the new split tables. Each column index number will be surrounded by parentheses. In a L^aT_eX table the \colnumbers should be invoked at the location where the author wants the numbers to appear. This should be after the last line of specified table header. In deluxetable this command has to come after \startdata. \colnumbers will not increment for columns hidden by the “h” command.

Note that when using decimal alignment the command \decimalcolnumbers must be used instead of \colnumbers and \decimals.

Long tables, i.e. more than 250 data lines, in AAS journal articles should be in the machine-readable format for presentation in the electronic edition. Machine-readable tables have two parts: the formatted ASCII data and a metadata header that provides format, units, and short explanations of each column of data. The meta-data header follows the same format and styles as used by CDS in their VizieR tables. This structure is designed to provide maximum flexibility and ease of use for readers who wish to further manipulate the data. Complete MRT documentation is provided, as is an online tool is available for authors to create their own machine readable tables.

For each machine-readable table, the author must include a short sample version of the full table in his or her L^aT_eX submission. This sample version will appear in PDF and HTML with the full data only available in the machine-readable format. The sample table should be 5 to 15 lines long and include a table note at the end with text indicating that a machine-readable version will be available in machine-readable format. For instance,

\tablecomments{Table 1 is published in its entirety in the machine-readable format.
      A portion is shown here for guidance regarding its form and content.}

When a sample table will not fit on a print page, e.g. exceptionally wide tables, there are a number of tricks an author can use to make the table fit. The first is to use a landscaped table which can be accomplished with \rotate in deluxetable. Another option is to use a smaller font size width, see 2.16.2. Some new options available in AASTeX v6.0 include splitting the table into 2 or 3 parts, see 2.16.6.4, or hiding columns, 2.16.6.1, with the full version as a MRT. Any combination of these options can be used at the same time. In extreme cases or tables where the author wants to provide a more descriptive table, authors may also create a “meta-data” table that only provides the column meta data, e.g. column number, column descriptions, etc. An example can be found here

Each example table must be cited and numbered as if it were a regular table.

Authors may include a portion or all of the data shown in any figure published in the AAS Journals. The data will be posted with the published article in a commonly accepted format, typically machine readable or FITS. Authors must indicate in the figure caption which portion of the displayed data is available as a DbF. An example caption would be “The BVRI photometry shown in panel b of this figure is available as the Data behind the Figure.”

A figure set is the framework used to present a large compendia of similar images and graphical material. They have the added author benefit of simplifying quanta charges for related figures. Examples include identification charts, spectral libraries, model output, etc. The figure set functionality gives the reader the ability to quickly find specific images within the figure set sequence and thus is well suited in cases with many similar images.

Figure sets must be mentioned explicitly by number and appear in correct numerical order in the body of the text. At least one image in a series must be displayed as an example figure for the PDF version of the final article. The corresponding caption should indicate that additional images are available in the Figure set. For example,

"The complete figure set (11 images) is available in the online journal.

The markup required to produce a figure set is included in AASTeX 6.0. The macros for AASTeX < 6 can be found in this file. The commands to construct a figure set are as follows.

\figsetstart

\figsetnum{figurenumber}

\figsettitle{figure set title}

\figsetgrpstart

\figsetgrpnum{figurenumber.1}

\figsetgrptitle{image 1 caption}

\figsetplot{figure set file}

\figsetgrpnote{image 1 caption}

\figsetgrpend

Repeat the block above for each figure in the set

\figsetend

The second command, \figsetnum, is the figure sequence number. The \figsettitle is the title for the entire figure set. The next six commands, between \figsetgrpstart and \figsetgrpend, must be repeated for each image in the figure set sequence. The \figsetgrpnum increments by one each time, e.g. figurenumber.1, figurenumber.2, figurenumber.3, etc. \figsetgrptitle is a title used to uniquely identify the specific image. It should be relatively short but descriptive. \figsetplot is the call to the EPS or PDF file containing the image. If an image consists of multiple EPS or PDF files one \figsetplot is required for each file. Lastly, \figsetgrpnote is the figure caption for that specific image. It may be unique or identical to all the others in the figure set but it must be specified in this field.

The example figure or figures should be placed after the figure set mark up in the L^aT_eX file and created like a normal figure, e.g., \begin{figure} …. An online tool is available to help create the figure set mark up, as is a python script located at our github “Tools” repository.

For reference purposes, a list of published articles with figure sets (>580) in the AAS Journals can be found using our Astronomy Image Explorer by toggling the “Content Type => Figure sets” search facet.

We now support animations as regular figures in AAS Journal articles. This functionality utitlizes a streaming widget that works in all major browsers and on mobile platforms.

We strongly recommend animations be delivered in the MPEG-4 container, specifically encoded with the H264 codec. Other formats may be used, however using MPEG-4 will provide the most faithful rendering of your video in the journal article.

Authors must supply a still frame from the animation in EPS/PDF format marked up like a regular figure to serve as an reference for the reader. This static figure should include text in the caption indicating that an animation is available in the HTML version of the final article. For instance, “This figure is available as an animation.” As with figure sets, authors should include enough information in the figure caption for readers of the final PDF article to determine what the animation illustrates.

A list of published articles with videos (>2000) in the AAS Journals can be found using our Astronomy Image Explorer by toggling the “Content Type => Videos” search facet.

Interactive figures give the reader the ability to manipulate the information contained in an image which can add clarity or help further the author’s narrative. These figures consist of two parts, the static figure file for the L^aT_eX/PDF copy and a dynamic Javascript and html framework that provides interactive control. The basic requirements for these figures are:

An example of an interactive figure is a 3D model. The underlying figure data is an X3D file while x3dom.js is the javascript driver that displays it. An author created interface is added via an HTML wrapper. The first 3D model published by the AAS Journals using this technique was Vogt et al. (2014). Vogt et al. have published a 2016 ApJ article entitled, Advanced Data Visualization In Astrophysics: The X3D Pathway,” that more fullly illustrates the power of X3D data objects and graphics.

Authors should consult online tutorials for more information on how to construct their own interactive figures. AAS Journal Data Editors can provide limited support via our ticket system. The current list of supported HTML/JS frameworks include:

Since interactive figures are not actionable in L^aT_eX/PDF it is necessary to include a non-interactive regular figure to use as an example. The example figure should also indicate to the reader that the enhanced figure is interactive and can be accessed online.

For reference purposes, a list of published articles with interactive in the AAS Journals can be found using our Astronomy Image Explorer by toggling the “Content Type => Interactive Figures” search facet.

Authors who wish to have the most important objects in their manuscript linked to CDS may do so using the

\object{text}

macro, or its alias \objectname. The text contained in the required argument will be shown in the manuscript and will serve as a link anchor to the source resolved by CDS’s Sesame name resolver. In cases where an author wants to show a name not recognized by Sesame, the macros take an optional arguement to supply a known name that will be used as the CDS identifier instead of the primary arguement text, e.g.

\object[SDSS J000004.21+000122.4]{SDSS 000004+000122}

This allows the author more flexibility when constructing the object link. Note that links will only be activated if the name provided in the argument is recognized by a participating data center. CDS has a validator that will extract this mark up and display a summary of which names could be verified. Authors are strongly advised to use this tool prior to submission as it is the author’s responsibility to use a recognized identifier. Note that the CDS tool does some cleaning of math mode before validating the names therefore it is better to use math mode for hyphens, e.g. “$-$”, instead of double-hyphens, “–“.

Similar markup is available for linking to data sets hosted externally such as the DOI issuing Zenodo repository.

\dataset[text]{url}

Where url is the URL link to the data. The bracketed argument is optional. When present the given text is used as the displayed hyperlink otherwise [DATASET] is printed.

When discussing atomic species, ionization levels can be indicated with the following command.

\ion{element}{level}

The ionization state is specified as the second argument and should be given as a numeral. For example, “Ca III” would be marked up as \ion{Ca}{3}.

For single, double, and triple chemical bonds, use the following macros.

\sbond

\dbond

\tbond

AASTeX contains commands that permit authors to specify alternate forms for fractions. L^aT_eX will set fractions in displayed math as built-up fractions; however, it is sometimes desirable to use case fractions in displayed equations. In such instances, one should use \case rather than \frac. Note, however, that authors using AASTeX should generally find it unnecessary to use any markup other than the standard L^aT_eX \frac.

As mentioned earlier, the AASTeX package contains a collection of assorted macros for symbols and abbreviations specific to an astronomical context. These are commonly useful and also somewhat difficult for authors to produce themselves because fussy kerning is required. See the symbols pages provided with the package distribution. Most of these commands can be used in both running text and math. However, \lesssim and \gtrsim can only be used in math mode.

AASTeX now uses the hyperref package for typesetting hyperlinks. The \href{href}{text} tag associates text in the manuscript with the specified resource (href) where href should be specified as a full URI, including the scheme: designator (http:, ftp:, etc.). The \url command supports the special case where an author wishes to express a URL in the text. With the hyperref package L^aT_eX can interpret any URL without requiring encoding of special characters.

The \email command is used to identify e-mail addresses anywhere in the manuscript. The text of the argument is the e-mail address. Please do not prepend the mailto:part.

\email{address}

This command should be used to indicate authors’ e-mail addresses in author lists at the beginning of manuscripts.

Several new commands have been introduced to make it easier to track revisions. To begin authors must include the trackchanges option when calling the style file, e.g.

\documentclass[trackchanges]{aastex6}

Commands are available to highlight added, deleted and replaced text.The commands and their output, with and with out the trackchanges option, are presented here.

Using the \listofchanges command in the article preamble will show all of the added, deleted and replaced text in a list at the end of the article. Note that this command must be called at the manuscript end just before \end{document}. If the linenumbers option is used in the documentclass call then the line number of every change at the end of the article is given.

Likewise, the new command \edit1{<text>}, \edit2{<text>} and \edit3{<text>} have been introduced to make it easier for authors to highlight changes to the manuscript in response to editor and referee comments. The three commands will produce bold red, italic blue, and purple <text>, respectively. Authors that choose to use these commands to highlight changes should use the first command to highlight new text from the first revision, the second command from the second revision and the third command if a third revision is necessary. The goal is to make it obvious what has been changed and at what point during the peer review process. For final typesetting the color can be removed simply by adding in the command \turnoffedit in the preamble.

Similarly the \authorcomment1{<text>}, \authorcomment2{<text>}, and \authorcomment3{<text>} commands are now available. These commands will prepend to the text “Collaboration note:” and highlight it in bold red, italics blue and purple but when the command \turnoffedit is used this text will not be shown at all. Authors can use these commands to mark text that they are not sure should be included in the final manuscript.