Future Direction

The first release of Iris is not equipped with the full capabilities of the tool as set forth in the scientific requirements; many additional SED building, analysis, and visualization functions will be added in incremental releases. Several key features are listed below.

Building SEDs

Ultimately, Iris will support access to precomputed SEDs provided by external archival services like the NED SED service, and specific scientific collaborations, like CANDELS, for extragalactic sources.

Users will be able to perform a bulk search and download of the SEDs associated to multiple sources, e.g., by searching for classes of sources in the archives ("AGNs", "brown dwarfs", etc.), or by supplying a list of source positions or a geometrical region of the sky.

Iris will be able to ingest data in complex formats, such as spectral data cubes (three-dimensional data) and theoretical spectral models.

Users will have the option of applying an aperture correction to individual photometric points.

Iris will seamlessly communicate with other VO tools via the Simple Application Messaging Protocol (SAMP).

Analysing SEDs

Iris will support the conversion of an aggregate SED to a rebinned SED; i.e., it will be able to bin a raw collection of SED segments and/or photometric points and provide the flux as a function of equally spaced spectral coordinate points, on a linear scale.

Users will be able to define their own models for fitting, and calculate integrated fluxes in intervals of spectral coordinates of their choosing, defined from the functional curve generated by the best-fit model of the SED.

Astrophysics features to be added to the tool include the determination of the extinction for "de-reddening" of the SED, based on extinction laws in multiple spectral regions; the evaluation of the effect on the observed SED of the redshift z and the underlying cosmological model; which is considered by default as the WMAP-5 cosmological model; the evaluation of the bolometric luminosity for a source from the measured flux, and an estimate of the distance provided by the user; and the ability for the user to change the default values of the cosmological parameters.

Iris will be equipped with a convolution tool for convolving a given SED with a generic function of the spectral coordinates; the user can define or be provided with a set of common analytical functions and instrumental profiles for this purpose.

Visualization and Interactive Editing

Iris will support a mechanism to allow the user to interactively define subsets of data points and/or segments to flag them for deletion, or interactively modify their positions in the spectral plot.

Users will be able to perform simple mathematical operations on a selected subset of points or spectral segments, e.g., to average multiple fluxes or spectral segments or perform an aperture correction with a given spatial model of the source.

Users will be able to "click and drag" a data point, set of points, or entire spectral segment to shift it along both the x and y axes, as well as to adjust the data in other ways, such as changing the curvature of a spectral segment or modifying the error bars.