AASTeX v7.0 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{aastex7}

This specifies the document class as aastex with the default style. The manuscript copy produced by this style is a tight typeset, single column format. Other styles are available. These styles, along with other publishing options, 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. In addition, AASTeX already has defined commands for all the major astronomical journals so authors should refrain from using their own as it generally leads to conflict errors during compilation.

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 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}

\published{published date}

\submitjournal{AASJournal name}

These commands will appear after the affiliation information and before the abstract. The text “Submitted to” is appended to the AASJournal name argument in the \submitjournal command. The first four commands will be typeset on a single line, separated by semicolons, and surrounded by parentheses. The typeset order will always be received, revised, accepted, and published but the commands can be listed in any order in the latex manuscript. If a date command is not provided it will be omitted in the typeset list. Note that authors can use any date format but published articles use Year Month Day.

The \reportnum{ID} command can be used to indicate additional manuscript information. This command will place the “ID” argument text in the upper right corner of the title page. This command can be used multiple times. For example:

\reportnum{astro-ph/0411275}
\reportnum{BAAS 2004, v36, n5}

Note that these commands are not used during production but authors might find it useful to use them to provide publishing meta-data in preprints.

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 short author list will be anonomized when the anonymous style option is used.

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.

It is not possible to use \bibitem within AASTeX’s references environment ( 2.14.4), nor will \cite commands work properly in the main body if \bibitem commands are absent.

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 latest aasjournal.bst file when using BibTex with AAS Journal manuscripts.

In 2024, we changed how inline citations are displayed in published article. Before this change, inline citations were last name + year, such as “(Smith et al. 2024)”. The new inline citation includes the  author first initials as well, e.g., “(T. Smith et al. 2024)”.  Authors with common last names, such as people with heritage from geographic regions such as Latin America and east Asia where there are some extremely common last names, now have greater recognition which helps address common name inequity while providing a simple and immediate way to better identify researchers while reading articles.

Another 2024 citation change affects authors of PSJ articles. The community standard for planetary science is to include article titles in the reference list, along with author names, journal title, year of publication, and volume and page numbers. To bring the style of PSJ into alignment with planetary science community standards, any accepted manuscripts with titles in the references will be published in PSJ. Manuscripts without titles in the references will not be updated by our publisher in production and will be published as is.

The latest aasjournal.bst file that was released with AASTeX v7 automatically produces inline citations with first author initials. In addition, PSJ authors can easily create references with titles included with this new .bst file by using the longbow style option.

\documentclass[longbib]{aastex7}

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}

AASTeX v7 defines journal abbreviations for a large number of major astronomical journals. The list is given below. For others not in this list 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. Lastly, a quick tip to get BibTeX for almost any DOI is to use curl:

curl -LH "Accept: application/x-bibtex" https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15991

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.

Authors can create a figure that consists of > 2 image files arranged in a grid pattern. The 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 image 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 image file to be displayed. The second argument is the width to scale the file by. Any L^AT_EX 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 an inverted pyramid style figure with three individual image files on the top, 2 image files in the middle, and one file on the bottom, all labeled “(a)” through “(f)”.

\begin{figure}
\gridline{\fig{fig1a.pdf}{0.3\textwidth}{(a)}
          \fig{fig1b.pdf}{0.3\textwidth}{(b)}
          \fig{fig1c.pdf}{0.3\textwidth}{(c)}}
\gridline{\fig{fig1d.pdf}{0.3\textwidth}{(d)}
          \fig{fig1e.pdf}{0.3\textwidth}{(e)}}
\gridline{\fig{fig1f.pdf}{0.3\textwidth}{(f)}}
\caption{A nice inverted pyramid figure 
consisting of six individual files}
\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.

There are many commands available in deluxetable to control the output. Commands that control the structure of the entire table must be specified before the \begin{deluxetable} call but note that there are a few exceptions. The exceptions will be pointed out when these commands are described. Multi-page deluxetables are created by including a \startlongtable before the deluxetable call.

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

If \startlongtable is left out a long table will flow off the page.

Wide tables will not always center properly when using the commands above. For wide, portrait tables the command \centerwidetable at the top of the deluxetable environment should be used first. If this command does not produce the desired results authors can manually move a wide, portrait table with the \movetableright=X where X is a recognized L^aT_eX unit such as in (inches) or mm (millimeters).

\movetableright=-1in

will move the table to the left 1 inch. This command appears before the \begin{deluxetable} call.

Landscape orientation, e.g. rotation, is available for both deluxetables and the tabular environment but how this is accomplished in v6.3.1 is slightly different than in versions v6.0 and earlier. The previous \rotate has been superceded by the superior rotatetable environment. This environment should surround all short tables requiring rotation.

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

While the \rotate command can still be used it is only recommended the rotation of splittables, see the cheat sheet chart in Section 2.16.5 for examples. Likewise, the new longrotatetable environment is used to rotate a multi-page deluxetable.

When using the rotatetable or longrotatetable environments the resulting table may spill over the top margin, particularly for wide tables. In these cases authors can adjust the landscaped table further down the page using the new \movetabledown=X command. This command is works in the same way as \movetableright=X works for wide portrait tables. For example,

\movetabledown=3mm

will move the landscape table down 3 millimeters. This command also appears before the \begin{deluxetable} call.

The * option informs L^AT_EX that a table (or figure) will span both columns in a two column style.

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

or

\begin{table*}
...
\end{table*}

When the * option is used, it can also be applied to the rotatetable environment to center the rotated table on the page otherwise the table will be left justified. See the cheat sheet chart in Section 2.16.5 for examples.

There other deluxetable commands must be used in the preamble inside the deluxetable environment.

\tabletypesize{font size command}

\tablewidth{dimen}

\tablenum{text}

\tablecolumns{num}

\tablecaption{text\label{key}}

\tablehead{text}

If a table is too wide for the PDF/EPS 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).

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, must 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 \tablehead as 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.

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. A 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}.

Since AASTeX 6.0, there have been 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 v7 sample file.

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 v6.0 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.

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.

When authors have exceptionally wide tables that will not fit on a page even after using the standard options, e.g. using the smallest font (2.16.2), rotating into landscape mode (2.16.8), and using the split table (2.16.6.4), the alternative is to create a descriptive table instead. A descriptive table is a metadata table that lists column information rather than example data from table. These tables will always have a machine readable component. An example might look like this.

\begin{deluxetable}{cccc}
\tablecaption{A very wide table!}
\tablehead{
   \colhead{Row number} & \colhead{Units} & \colhead{Label} & \colhead{Description}
}
\startdata
1 & \nodata & ID & Source identifier \\
2 & deg & RAdeg & Right Ascension in decimal degrees (J2000) \\
3 & deg & DEdeg & Declination in decimal degrees (J2000) \\
...
100 & \nodata & Note & Additional notes \\
\enddata
\tablecomments{Table X is published in its entirety in the electronic 
edition of the {\it Astrophysical Journal}.  A portion is shown here 
for guidance regarding its form and content.}

The following chart shows all the possible table permutations supported and how to obtained them with an AASTeX v7 manuscript. It includes the deluxetable, the tabular, and the new splittable environments in both single and two columns typeset styles, with or without landscape rotation, and over one or multiple pages.

Remember that for wide tables \movetableright and \movetabledown can be used to tweak the positions of portrait and landscape tables, respectively. Both commands will accept any recognized L^aT_eX units, e.g. pix, inch, etc., and negative values move the table in the opposite direction.

¹. The default, preprint, manuscript and modern styles produce single column manuscripts. The two column and preprint2 styles produce double column manuscripts.

Long tables, i.e. more than 200 data lines, in AAS journal articles should be in the machine-readable format for presentation in the electronic edition. Complete MRT documentation is provided here.

For each machine-readable table, the author must include a short sample version of the full table in their L^aT_eX submission. The example table can either but 5-10 lines of the full table or a descriptive table. The example table must be cited and numbered as if it were a regular table. This sample version will appear in PDF and HTML with the full data only available in the machine-readable format via the DATA link in the HTML article. The sample table should 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.}

AASTeX v7 introduces a new command, \digitalasset, that places a blue border around the table caption. This blue border is a visual clue to the reader that this table has a digital asset. The command can be invoked anywhere inside the table environment. Note that this blue border will not be shown in the published article as this functionality is meant for peer review and ArXiV submissions.

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.”

Additional information about DbFs is available in the Data Guide

The \digitalasset command should be used for all figures that have data behind them. It places a blue border around the figure caption as a visual clue to the reader that data is available as a digital asset. The command can be invoked anywhere inside the figure environment. Note that this blue border will not be shown in the published article as this functionality is meant for peer review and ArXiV submissions.

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 all AASTeX 6+ versions. The commands to construct a figure set are as follows.

\figsetstart

\figsetnum{figurenumber}

\figsettitle{figure set title}

\figsetgrpstart

\figsetgrpnum{figurenumber.1}

\figsetgrptitle{short image 1 title}

\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 as there is not much space for this title (see figure below). \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 the specific image called by \figsetplot. This caption may be unique or identical to all the others in the figure set but it must be specified in this field.

The figure shows where the repeated figure set commands are placed in the published article. This is provided to give the user some idea of how the raw LaTeX commands are rendered in the final product. Authors are encouraged to consult the Astronomy Image Explorer to view more examples of published figure sets.

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} ….

The \digitalasset command should be used for all figures with figure sets. It places a blue border around the figure caption as a visual clue to the reader that additional figure components are available. The command can be invoked anywhere inside the figure environment. Note that this blue border will not be shown in the published article as this functionality is meant for peer review and ArXiV submissions.

Additional figure set information is available in the graphics guide.

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.

Authors must supply a static representation of the animation, e.g. a still image from the video, in EPS/PDF/PNG format marked up like a regular figure to serve as a reference for the reader. The caption of an animated figure should include text describing the animation, i.e. start/stop times, durations, events that happen at specific times, etc., and 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.

Please also use the new interactive environment with all example animation figures.

\begin{figure}
\begin{interactive}{animation}{video file name}
figure call (e.g.\plotone, \includegraphics, etc.)
\end{interactive}
\caption{Descriptive caption of example figure and what the animation shows.}
\end{figure}

The last argument in interactive is the video file that the publisher will stream in the HTML article. The interactive environment also puts a blue border around the figure indicating that an animation is present.

Additional animation information, including optimal codecs, is available in the graphics guide.

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. All interactive 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. We have published rotatable 3D images, zoom and clickable vector plots, and “blink” style figures. Examples can be discovered in the Astronomy Image Explorer and searching the content type for interactive figures.

We have also partnered with the Astropy Project to provide an easy way to include interactive figures of time series (such as light curves, radial velocity curves, etc.) in articles that are created from Python and does not require any expertise in Javascript. A new astropy.timeseries module is now available in the astropy core package, and can be used to construct a time series object in Python. With this object, you can then make use of the aas-timeseries package to create your interactive figure. We recommend reading through the guides in the aas-timeseries documentation to find out how to create such figures. In particular, the section Preparing an interactive figure for submission to AAS Journals will show you how to create a .zip bundle containing all the necessary files for the interactive figure as well as static PDF versions of the figures that you can then include in your paper.

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. Authors should use the new interactive environment in all example interactive figures.

\begin{figure}
\begin{interactive}{type}{file}
figure call (e.g.\plotone, \includegraphics, etc.)
\end{interactive}
\caption{Description of the example figure and the interactive portion which includes how to use the interactive functionality.}
\end{figure}

The interactive environment should surround the example figure call and possess two arguments. The first is declaration of the enhanced graphic type while the second argument is the .tar.gz or .zip package containing all of the interactive elements, e.g html framework, javascript driver, and data file. Authors should use the type js for generic javascript interactive figure and lc for astropy generated light curve figures. The interactive environment also puts a blue border around the figure indicating that an animation is present.

Additional animation information, including basic requirements and supported frameworks, is available in the graphics guide.

Authors who wish to have the most important objects in their manuscript linked to CDS/Simbad or NED 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 argument to supply a known name that will be used as the CDS identifier instead of the primary argument text, e.g.

\object[SDSS J000004.21+000122.4]{J0000+0001}

This allows the author more flexibility when constructing the object link. This example highlights the fact that such truncated names are often misleading or severely ambiguous and that the first usage of an object name in a text should provide the full, validated name before subsequently utilizing any truncations.

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. Complete information on proper object nomenclature is provided in the NED Best Practices guide (doi:10.26132/NED7). 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, “–“.

LaTeX markup is available for linking to datasets created by the author and hosted externally from the Journals at generalist, e.g., Zenodo, institutional, or domain-specific repositories. The LaTeX tag is:

\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.

The \doi command has been modified so that “https:/doi.org/” is prepended to the argument and the resulting output is hyperlinked. This command can be used with \dataset. For example the LaTeX:

The data is available at MAST: \dataset[doi: 10.17909/T9XG63]{\doi{10.17909/T9XG63}.

produces text:

The data is available at MAST: dot: 10.17909/T9XG63.

Another example LaTeX markup (for Zenodo) is:

The data is available on Zenodo under an open-source 
Creative Commons Attribution license: 
\dataset[doi:10.5281/zenodo.3938720]{https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3938720}.

that produces:

The data is available on Zenodo under an open-source Creative Commons Attribution license: doi:10.5281/zenodo.3938720.

More information on how to use such repositories is available in our Data Guide, in our Repositories Tutorial on GitHub, and in the article, “Best Practices for Data Publication” (Chen et al. 2022, ApJS, doi:10.3847/1538-4365/ac6268) where the most recent version is hosted by NED (doi:10.26132/NED7).

It is important to note that the \dataset tag should only be used for data repositories that the authors created, i.e. contains their own datasets. DOI repositories containing data from other sources or software needs to be cited instead. Authors can use the website doi2bib.org to create BIBTeX for any DOI.

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.

The IAU 2015 resolution B3 defines nominal solar and planetary values by establishing conversions between solar and planetary values and SI units. The rational and specifications are given in Prsa et al. 2016, AJ, 152, 41. The recommended nominal conversion constants for LaTeX have been incorporate into v6.3.1 to help authors follow the IAU resolution.

The general commands are:

Where the subscripts Ee, Ep, Je, and Jp refer to the equatorial and polar radii of Earth and Jupiter, respectively. Other examples and predefined commands in AASTeX v6.3.1 include:

AASTeX now uses the hyperref package for typesetting hyperlinks. Please do not import hyperref as a package. 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.

Authors should use the \hypersetup command in the preamble to override the classfile defaults. For example,

\hypersetup{linkcolor=red,citecolor=green,filecolor=cyan,urlcolor=magenta}

resets the colors to the \hyperref defaults.

The \added command has been re-introduced to make it easier to track revisions. The trackchanges style option will show any text marked with \added in bold, e.g.

\documentclass[trackchanges]{aastex7}

Removing the trackchanges style option will remove the bold font on the \added text. The goal is to make it obvious what has been changed for the Science Editors and to make it easy to turn the bolded changes on and off.

The publication style is to keep all footnotes sequentially ordered, including the footnotes used for affiliations. Older versions of AASTeX reset the footnotes back to one after the affilations so that the first footnote in the main body of the manuscript started at one. AASTeX v7 has been changed so that all footnotes are sequential to match the publication style. There may be cases were an author would want to return to the old ways and reset the footnote order in the main body. This can be done with the resetfootnote style option , e.g.

\documentclass[resetfootnote]{aastex7}