This User Guide is somewhat inelegant, but we hope that it will prove useful. The structure of the ddscat.par file is intended to be simple and suggestive so that, after reading the above notes once, the user may not have to refer to them again.
The file rel_notes in DDA/doc lists known bugs in DDSCAT.5a . An up-to-date version will be maintained in the directory where the publicly available source code is located (see the README file). Users are encouraged to provide B. T. Draine (draine@astro.princeton.edu) with their email address; bug reports, and any new releases of DDSCAT, will be made known to those who do!
P. J. Flatau maintains the WWW page
``SCATTERLIB - Light Scattering Codes Library"
with URL http://atol.ucsd.edu/
pflatau.
The SCATTERLIB Internet site is a library of light scattering codes.
Emphasis is on providing source
codes (mostly FORTRAN). However, other information related to scattering
on spherical and
non-spherical particles is collected: an extensive list of references
to light scattering methods, refractive index, etc.
This URL page contains a section on the discrete dipole approximation.
Concrete suggestions for improving DDSCAT (and this User Guide) are welcomed. If you wish to cite this User Guide, we suggest the following citation:
Draine, B.T., & Flatau, P.J. 1998, ``User Guide for the Discrete Dipole Approximation Code DDSCAT (Version 5a10)'', Princeton Observatory Preprint POPe-xxx (URL ftp://astro.princeton.edu/draine/scat/ddscat/ver5a10/UserGuide.ps.gz).
Finally, the authors have one special request: We would very much appreciate preprints and (especially!) reprints of any papers which make use of DDSCAT!