SPLAT - Spectral Analysis Tool
SPLAT is a graphical tool for displaying, comparing, modifying
and analysing astronomical spectra stored in NDF, FITS and TEXT
files as well as the new NDX format. SPLAT is now part of the
STARJAVA collection.
It can read in many spectra at the same time and then display
these as line plots. Each display window, of which there can be
many, can be used to view one or several spectra at the same
time. Display windows can be interactively zoomed and scrolled,
centered on specific wavelengths, provide continuous coordinate
readout, produce printable hardcopy and be configured in many
ways. They also provide the basis for interactive analysis
facilities. All of these functions are displayed in a visually
rich format, that is intended to appeal especially to casual
users of spectral data analysis facilities, as it includes some
facilities such as drag-and-drop and undoable editing.
The current set of analysis facilities include the fitting of a
polynomial to selected parts of a spectrum, the fitting of
Gaussian, Lorentzian and Voigt profiles to emission and absorption
lines and the filtering of spectra using average, median and
line-shape window functions as well as wavelet denoising. A
database of laboratory line positions is available to aid in
identification.
SPLAT also supports a full range of coordinate systems for
spectra, using the latest facilities of the Starlink AST
library. This allows coordinates to be displayed and aligned in
many different coordinate systems (wavelength, frequency, energy,
velocity) and transformed between these and different standards of
rest (topocentric, heliocentric, dynamic and kinematic local
standards of rest etc.).
Documentation
The main source of documentation for SPLAT is Starlink User Note
243, which is also the on-line help. If you have SPLAT installed on
your machine then you should be able to view this using the "Help"
menu. Otherwise (if you just want a look) you can find it
on-line, you can get a hardcopy
here.
Initially you should work you way through the
getting started,
displaying more than one spectrum
and
basic control of a plot view
sections.
Release notes
A list of the latest changes to SPLAT can be found in the
NEWS file.
Obtaining SPLAT
SPLAT is part of the STARJAVA collection available in the {CURRENT}
release from EAO. For a standalone installation look in the SPLAT-VO support page which can be
more recent. Also see the SPLAT-VO
page for news about the GAVO version of
SPLAT. This is a new development that is providing the improvements in
the VO facilities of SPLAT.
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