The AASTeX Package for Manuscript Preparation

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has developed a markup package to assist authors in preparing manuscripts intended for submission to AAS-affiliated journals. For help send email to aastex-help@aas.org.

AASTeX Download

AASTeX is available for the preparation of electronic manuscripts. The current version of the package requires LaTeX 2e and is based on the emulateapj classfile.

The current version of the package is AASTeX v6.3 but v6.0, v6.1, and v6.2 are still available. The distribution contains the AASTeX class file, documentation, and sample files. The sample files include graphics and supplemental materials files and a new .bst file for BiBTeX to properly format AAS Journal references.

Full distribution:

  • AASTeX v6.3.1 (March 1, 2021) TGZ (1.9 MB) | ZIP (1.9 MB)
  • AASTeX v6.3 (July 10 8, 2019) TGZ (1.9 MB) | ZIP (1.9 MB)
  • AASTeX v6.2 (January 8, 2018) TGZ (0.9 MB) | ZIP (0.9 MB)
  • AASTeX v6.1 (October 17, 2016) TGZ (1.9 MB) | ZIP (1.9 MB)
  • AASTeX v6.0 (March 2, 2016) TGZ (1.4 MB) | ZIP (1.4 MB)

Classfile only:

BST file only:

Dual Anonymous Review (DAR) templates:

AASTeX Author's Guide

General information on preparation of manuscripts using the AASTeX v6.3 classfile can be found in the AASTeX Author Guide. The guide for v6.0 can be found here. The guide for v6.1 is available here. The v6.2 guide can be found here. The v6.3 guide is available here.

AASTeX Revision History

What’s new in the latest release information in the revision history.

Using natbib with AASTeX

AASTeX allows authors to Patrick Daly’s natbib package to manage citations. The natbib package re-implements LaTeX’s \cite command, and offers greater flexibility for managing citations in the author-year form. A short guide is available.

AASTeX Symbol Fonts

The AASTeX package contains a collection of assorted macros for commonly-used astronomical symbols and abbreviations. Go here for more information.

Facility Keywords

To aid organizations in obtaining information on the effectiveness of their telescopes, the AAS has created a vocabulary of facility keywords for telescope facilities for use in journal articles. The use of a common set of facility keywords across astronomical publications will make searches for telescopes significantly easier and more accurate. The current list of over 500 recognized keywords is available here.

Some Helpful TeX Hints

Printing is different from typewriting, and TeX is different from other word processing tools. This file consists of reminders about things that require special attention so that TeX can format the input properly and a list of external macros and codes to make life easier.