PhoSim Tutorial 14: How to Use Different Spectral Energy Distributions

The spectral energy distribution of every entry in the catalog can be customized. The objects automatically generated from the stars and galaxies commands have unique realistic SEDs. You can customize the SEDs in a number of different ways. An example of this is these three simple catalogs below which generate a M star, a Sun-like star, and an O star. 


rightascension 0

declination 0

filter 1

object 0 -0.01 0.0 15 Kurucz1993/kp00_3500.fits_g45_3500.gz 0 0 0 0 0 0 star none none

object 0 0.0 0.0 15 Kurucz1993/kp00_5750.fits_g45_5750.gz 0 0 0 0 0 0 star none none

object 0 0.01 0.0 15 Kurucz1993/kp00_40000.fits_g45_40000.gz 0 0 0 0 0 0 star none none


rightascension 0

declination 0

filter 2

object 0 -0.01 0.0 15 Kurucz1993/kp00_3500.fits_g45_3500.gz 0 0 0 0 0 0 star none none

object 0 0.0 0.0 15 Kurucz1993/kp00_5750.fits_g45_5750.gz 0 0 0 0 0 0 star none none

object 0 0.01 0.0 15 Kurucz1993/kp00_40000.fits_g45_40000.gz 0 0 0 0 0 0 star none none


rightascension 0

declination 0

filter 3

object 0 -0.01 0.0 15 Kurucz1993/kp00_3500.fits_g45_3500.gz 0 0 0 0 0 0 star none none

object 0 0.0 0.0 15 Kurucz1993/kp00_5750.fits_g45_5750.gz 0 0 0 0 0 0 star none none

object 0 0.01 0.0 15 Kurucz1993/kp00_40000.fits_g45_40000.gz 0 0 0 0 0 0 star none none


These catalogs use this library of SEDs can be used with PhoSim that are curated by the Spanish Virtual Observatory and the Space Telescope Institute. After downloading and untarring, these SEDs should be put into the directory phosim/data/SEDs, so that the directory will look something like:


AGN                 BT-NextGenGNS93  CastelliKurucz2004  GRAMS-O-rich-Original  Koester         Morley2014        POPSTARFerrini    ProcessCatalogsForPhosim.py  TMAP

AMES-Cond2000       BT-Settl-CIFIST  Coelho2014          HRES                   Kurucz1993      NextGen           POPSTARKroupa     README                       TMAP-Grid1

AMES-Dusty2000      BT-Settl2014     DRIFT-PHOENIX       Husfeld                Levenhagen2017  NextGenSolar      POPSTARSalpeter1  Saumon2012                   TMAP-Tubingen

BRUZUALCHARLOT1995  BlackBody        GALACTIC            KINNEYCALZETTI1996     Morley2012      POPSTARChambrier  POPSTARSalpeter2  TLUSTY-Ostar200-Bstar2006



We then generated images using 3 separate phosim commands with -c examples/nobackground. Then a 3 color image can be made with the following command:


ds9 -rgb -red output/generic_e_9999_f3_chip_E000.fits.gz -scale log -green output/generic_e_9999_f2_chip_E000.fits.gz

 -scale log -blue output/generic_e_9999_f1_chip_E000.fits.gz -scale log -rgb close


The corresponding 3 color image is below: