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Andrea Banzatti edited this page Apr 20, 2026 · 2 revisions

Introduction

iSLAT (the interactive Spectral-Line Analysis Tool) is a python package that provides an interactive interface for the visualization, exploration, and analysis of molecular spectra. Synthetic spectra are made using a simple slab model written by Simon Bruderer and originally described in Banzatti et al. 2012; the code uses molecular data from HITRAN (Gordon et al. 2022, Gordon et al. 2026). iSLAT has been developed for and tested on spectra at infrared wavelengths as observed at different resolving powers (R = 700-90,000) with: JWST-MIRI, Spitzer-IRS, VLT-CRIRES, IRTF-ISHELL. Examples of these spectra are included for users to practice with the tool functionalities across a range of resolving powers. iSLAT has been built as a flexible tool that should work with one-dimensional molecular spectra observed with other instruments too, provided that some requirements are met (see below). The first public version of iSLAT (version 4) is presented and described in Jellison et al. 2024 and is still accessible in the branch [add branch]. This is the new version of iSLAT (version 5), which includes significant improvements and updates as described in this Wiki. A screenshot of iSLAT's GUI is provided here: [add figure, updated to new version]

Table of Contents

HITRAN data

At first launch by the user, iSLAT will download from HITRAN the data for a default list of molecules: H2, H2O, CO, CO2, CH4, HCN, NH3, OH, C2H2, C2H4, C2H6, C4H2, HCN, HC3N and some of their isotopologues. These datafiles are stored into the folder "HITRANdata" and are available to load and use in iSLAT (see below). Any additional molecule or isotopologue can be downloaded from HITRAN using the "HITRAN query" function in iSLAT. The current HITRAN data release is described in Gordon et al. 2026. As of iSLAT version 4.05, we have included two line lists provided in Arabhavi et al. 2024 and the HITEMP line lists for CO and H2O; if you use these, please cite the respective references.

Acknowledgements

It is hard to remember to acknowledge and cite all the tools we use in research, and often it is impossible to offer more than personal gratitude to the many people who have contributed to the tools and instruments we use. Science is a community endeavor that always builds "on the shoulders of giants", but these giants are by now a multitude and are often unknown. They simply did good work and shared it, and left a heritage that became useful to others.

iSLAT's story is similar: it is the outcome of experience, passion, and complementary contributions of multiple people spanning more than 16 years, even if we focus on just its main authors. We offer our gratitude for all the tools we have used to build iSLAT. If you find iSLAT useful for your research, and if you can remember doing it, please add its citation in your publications and oral/poster presentations. It's just a way to say "thank you". The main references to cite are:

  • McCaskill et al., 2026 (version 5, code)
  • Jellison et al. 2024 (version 4, paper)
  • Johnson et al. 2024 (version 4, code)
  • Banzatti et al. 2025 (if you use the "MIRI_general" line list or other line lists provided in LINELISTS/)
  • LMFIT (if you use any of the fitting functions in iSLAT), plus other packages as appropriate.
  • spectres, partly used for pixel resampling to match data while conserving flux

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