Research from University of Grenoble Has Provided New Data on Astrophysics.

According to recent research from Grenoble, France, "The advent of large instantaneous bandwidth receivers and high spectral resolution spectrometers on (sub-)millimeter telescopes has opened up the possibilities for unbiased spectral surveys. Because of the large amount of data they contain, any analysis of these surveys requires dedicated software tools."

"Here we present an extension of the widely used CLASS software that we developed to that purpose. This extension, named Weeds, allows for searches in atomic and molecular lines databases (e.g. JPL or CDMS) that may be accessed over the internet using a virtual observatory (VO) compliant protocol. The package permits a quick navigation across a spectral survey to search for lines of a given species. Weeds is also capable of modeling a spectrum, as often needed for line identification," wrote S. Maret and colleagues, University of Grenoble.

The researchers concluded: "We expect that Weeds will be useful for analyzing and interpreting the spectral surveys that will be done with the HIFI instrument onboard Herschel, but also observations carried-out with ground based millimeter and sub-millimeter telescopes and interferometers, such as IRAM-30 m and Plateau de Bure, CARMA, SMA, eVLA, and ALMA."

Maret and colleagues published their study in Astronomy & Astrophysics (Weeds: a CLASS extension for the analysis of millimeter and sub-millimeter spectral surveys. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2011;526():A47).

For additional information, contact S. Maret, University of Grenoble, CNRS, Laboratory Astrophysics Grenoble, Observ Grenoble, UMR 571, Grenoble, FRANCE..

Publisher contact information for the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics is: EDP Sciences S a, 17, Avenue du Hoggar, PA Courtaboeuf, BP 112, F-91944 les Ulis Cedex a, France.

Keywords: City:Grenoble, Country:France, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Physics, Software

This article was prepared by Computer Weekly News editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2011, Computer Weekly News via VerticalNews.com.