Arcsec to Parsec Calculator

This repository contains a small Flask application for converting angular sizes in arcseconds to projected physical distances in parsecs using a cosmological distance model from Astropy.

The calculator exposes two endpoints:

• / – returns a welcome message.
• /calculate – accepts a JSON payload with arcsec and redshift values and returns the corresponding distance in parsecs.

Background

This project began as part of my Master's thesis on dual Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and supermassive black holes (SMBHs). The main research focus involved analysing observational X‑ray data from the following telescopes:

• Chandra
• XMM-Newton
• Swift/XRT
• NuSTAR

Running locally

1. Install the required dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Start the application using Flask's built-in server:

   python theapp.py

   Or run with Gunicorn (recommended for production):

   gunicorn theapp:app

3. Send a POST request to /calculate with a JSON body. Example:

   curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/calculate \
        -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
        -d '{"arcsec": 1.0, "redshift": 0.1}'

The response will contain the calculated distance in parsecs.

Deployment

A basic Procfile and app.yaml are included for deploying the API to cloud platforms that support Gunicorn. Modify them as needed for your environment.

License

This repository is released under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.