Iris: An extensible application for building and analyzing spectral energy distributions

Creators: Laurino, O.; Budynkiewicz, J.; D'Abrusco, R.; Bonaventura, N.; Busko, I.; Cresitello-Dittmar, M.; Doe, S. M.; Ebert, R.; Evans, J. D.; Norris, P.; Pevunova, O.; Refsdal, B.; Thomas, B.; Thompson, R.

Abstract

Iris is an extensible application that provides astronomers with a user-friendly interface capable of ingesting broad-band data from many different sources in order to build, explore, and model spectral energy distributions (SEDs). Iris takes advantage of the standards defined by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance, but hides the technicalities of such standards by implementing different layers of abstraction on top of them. Such intermediate layers provide hooks that users and developers can exploit in order to extend the capabilities provided by Iris. For instance, custom Python models can be combined in arbitrary ways with the Iris built-in models or with other custom functions. As such, Iris offers a platform for the development and integration of SED data, services, and applications, either from the user's system or from the web. In this paper we describe the built-in features provided by Iris for building and analyzing SEDs. We also explore in some detail the Iris framework and software development kit, showing how astronomers and software developers can plug their code into an integrated SED analysis environment.

Additional Information

© 2014 Elsevier B.V. Received 1 May 2014; Received in revised form 17 July 2014; Accepted 18 July 2014; Available online 24 July 2014. The Authors would like to acknowledge Giuseppina Fabbiano, Ian Evans, Jonathan McDowell, and Aneta Siemiginowska for their support and feedback in all the phases of the work. Dan Nguyen and Joseph Miller (SAO) supported the development team in the very early stages of the work. We also thank the Italian Space Agency Science Data Center for the contribution of the ASDC Data plug-in, in particular Paolo Giommi, Roberto Primavera, Milvia Capalbi, and Bruce Gendre. Support for the development of Iris was provided by the Virtual Astronomical Observatory contract AST0834235. Support for Sherpa is provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through the Chandra X-ray Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration contract NAS8-03060. Support for Specview is provided by the Space Telescope Science Institute, operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under National Aeronautics and Space Administration contract NAS5-26555. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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