Overview

iSpec is an open source framework for spectral analysis (Blanco-Cuaresma et al. 2014a, Blanco-Cuaresma 2019). It is suitable for the creation of spectral libraries such as the Gaia FGK Benchmark Stars library (Blanco-Cuaresma et al 2014b) and the determination of astrophysical parameters such as effective temperature, surface gravity, metallicity and individual abundances. iSpec works in conjunction with several radiative transfer codes for the generation of synthetic spectra and the derivation of abundances from equivalent widths. Additionally, it can interpolate spectra from pre-computed grids.

The framework offers an API that can be used from Python 3 scripts, but it also includes a visual interface that is SAMP ready and it can interoperate with other astronomical applications such as TOPCAT, VOSpec and splat facilitating a indirect way to access the Virtual Observatory.

iSpec can be downloaded from http://www.blancocuaresma.com/s/. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License (open source license), except the included radiative transfer codes:

This document describes the installation steps and a general overview of iSpec's functionalities.