2014/07/24 by O. Laurino, Omar Laurino, Jamie Budynkiewicz +25
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Exploit #Extensibility #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #IRIS (biosensor) #Interface (matter) #Modular design #Plug-in #Python (programming language) #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #Software #Software versioning #Spectral energy distribution #astro-ph.IM
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.ascom.2014.07.004
18 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Computing
openalex publication_date 2014/07/24 · arxiv created 2014/07/25 · arxiv updated 2014/07/28 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Iris is an extensible application that provides astronomers with a user-friendly interface capable of ingesting broad-band data from many different sources in order to build, explore, and model spectral energy distributions (SEDs). Iris takes advantage of the standards defined by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance, but hides the technicalities of such standards by implementing different layers of abstraction on top of them. Such intermediate layers provide hooks that users and developers can exploit in order to extend the capabilities provided by Iris. For instance, custom Python models can be combined in arbitrary ways with the Iris built-in models or with other custom functions. As such, Iris offers a platform for the development and integration of SED data, services, and applications, either from the user's system or from the web. In this paper we describe the built-in features provided by Iris for building and analyzing SEDs. We also explore in some detail the Iris framework and software development kit, showing how astronomers and software developers can plug their code into an integrated SED analysis environment.