Starlink SPLAT-VO
The Starlink Spectral Analysis
Tool (SPLAT) has been upgraded to include a
toolbox for querying, downloading and displaying spectra
from the current generation of SSAP servers. This is now part of the
official SPLAT release, which comes with JAC Starlink.
More recently SPLAT has been updated
(by Mark Taylor)
so that it can interoperate with other SAMP aware applications,
such as TOPCAT and the SSAP support has been updated to
version 1.0. This version is available here.
This latest version of SPLAT is available as a download for installing
onto your desktop:
SPLAT-VO installer (100Mb)
or as a webstart application:
SPLAT-VO webstart
The changes are described in the
NEWS
file.
Both versions will run using Linux (glibc2.3), Windows (XP/Vista 32bit),
Mac OS X (10.4 ppc & 10.4 i386)
and Solaris (8+). The installer is an executable jar file so you just
need to run this using the command:
java -jar splat-vo.jar
After downloading it.
If you install SPLAT-VO locally then it may integrate into your desktop
or alternatively (for UNIX only) you can run it by executing the
splat script located in the
<root>/bin/splat directory.
Vista users should note that the installer will not install into system
directories. Use a user-specific directory instead.
SPLAT-VO is part of the Starlink STARJAVA package and is available under
the GPL.
The complete documentation (which is also available in the on-line help)
is available as SUN/243
Highlights of these changes, besides being able to make SSAP queries,
are the matching of spectral coordinates and fluxes between spectra.
Spectral coordinates include the full range described in FITS WCS Paper
III, that is wavelength, frequency, energy and velocity etc. These can
be described in various rest frames -- topocentric, heliocentric,
dynamic and kinematic local -- and can be transformed between them all.
Differences between data value units can be automatically taken account
of when overlaying spectra as long as the units strings conform to the
system described in FITS WCS paper I. Also, automatic identification
and conversion between flux per unit wavelength and flux per unit
frequency is provided and does not require any "dimensional analysis"
information to be present
These two systems will be extended to include others such as magnitude
and antenna temperature that require additional meta-data to fully
describe the inter-system transformations. All coordinate and flux
transformations are handled by the
Starlink AST package,
developed by Rodney Warren-Smith and David Berry (dsb@ast.man.ac.uk).
AST also provides the plotting facilities used for drawing spectra in
SPLAT-VO.
Usage hints
The SSAP query dialog is opened by pressing the
icon in the toolbar, or by selecting the "SSAP" option in the "File"
menu. Once you have queried for spectra in a region of the sky you can
download individual ones by double clicking on the relevant row, or
a set by selecting all the individual rows and pressing
"Display selected". Finally once displayed you need to switch the
"Match coordinates and/or fluxes" option on which is found in the
"Options" menu of the plot (not the main window).
Or look at the new Walkthough
description.
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