iCompare: A Package for Automated Comparison of Solar System Integrators

TL;DR

iCompare is a Python tool that automates the comparison and validation of solar system integrators by assessing their ephemeris accuracy across different orbital regions, aiding in software pipeline development.

Contribution

The paper introduces iCompare, a new Python package that automates the comparison of solar system integrators and visualizes their performance, facilitating validation and selection.

Findings

iCompare effectively compares integrator accuracy across various orbital regions.

The tool enables monitoring of integrator performance over software versions.

It provides an intuitive dashboard for visual analysis of results.

Abstract

We present a tool for the comparison and validation of the integration packages suitable for Solar System dynamics. iCompare, written in Python, compares the ephemeris prediction accuracy of a suite of commonly-used integration packages (JPL/HORIZONS, OpenOrb, OrbFit at present). It integrates a set of test particles with orbits picked to explore both usual and unusual regions in Solar System phase space and compares the computed to reference ephemerides. The results are visualized in an intuitive dashboard. This allows for the assessment of integrator suitability as a function of population, as well as monitoring their performance from version to version (a capability needed for the Rubin Observatory's software pipeline construction efforts). We provide the code on GitHub with a readily runnable version in Binder (https://github.com/dirac-institute/iCompare).