Weeds: A CLASS extension for the analysis of millimeter and sub-millimeter spectral surveys

Abstract

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. 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. © 2010 ESO.