Extending the Data Central Simple Spectra Viewer

CI: – Dr. S. O’Toole

An easy to deploy and use web-based tool to visualise astronomical spectra, that incorporates commonly used analysis functions, has long been desired by the Australian astronomical community. ADACS has previously supported work to port the MARZ web tool written by Sam Hinton at UQ from the Angular.js v1 to React.js frameworks.While this satisfied the immediate need to modernise the tool, addressing more fundamental structural problems with MARZ was not part of the projects remit. We have developed the Simple Spectra Viewer tool to address some of the shortcomings of the MARZ tool. It includes the ability to view multiple/time-series spectra, and is written using well established and supported libraries in Python and Javascript, making it easier to maintain and support.This new spectrum tool moves beyond optical/infrared data and allows visualisation of all spectra in FITS format.

In this proposal, we request ADACS support to develop a plugin framework for the Data Central Simple Spectra Viewer, which would allow astronomersto develop and implement simple add-ons that can analyse spectra in place. This includes incorporating the redshifting capabilities of MARZ, but would allow further extensions, such as the line fitting that makes up the Webster et al. proposal in this ADACS round, as well as, e.g. the measurement of equivalent widths.