Constructing and Analyzing Spectral Energy Distributions with the Virtual Observatory
Abstract
Spectral energy distributions (SEDs) are a common and useful means of assessing the relative contributions of different emission processes occurring within an object. Iris, the Virtual Astronomical Observatory (VAO) SED tool, seamlessly combines key features of several existing astronomical software applications to streamline and enhance the SED analysis process. With Iris, users may build and display SEDs, browse data and metadata and apply filters to them, fit models to SEDs, and calculate confidence limits on best-fit parameters. SED data may be built from a number of sources using the SED Builder. Iris supports the Simple Application Messaging Protocol for interoperability with other Virtual Observatory applications, like the VAO Data Discovery tool, and can directly fetch SEDs from the NASA Extragalactic Database SED service. Particular attention has been paid to the integration of user spectrophotometric data from files in several different formats. File readers for custom formats can be provided at runtime, as well as custom models to fit the data, as template libraries for template fitting or arbitrary python functions. New functionalities can be added by installing plugins, i.e. third party components that are developed using the Iris Software Development Kit. The VAO was established as a partnership of the Associated Universities, Inc. and the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. Iris Individual components have also been supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through the Chandra X-ray Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of the NASA contract NAS8-03060, and by the Space Telescope Science Institute, operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the NASA.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #221
- Pub Date:
- January 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AAS...22124038L