To acknowledge the use of SpExoDisks.com to support your research, please include the following statement in your publication: "This research used the SpExoDisks Database at spexodisks.com". A reference describing SpExoDisks is in preparation (Wheeler et al. 2024), and will be included as standard reference in the future.
If you use specific spectra in a publication, in addition to the general reference above please cite also the individual reference(s) indicated in the header of the spectra files as downloaded from SpExoDisks.
Upon download, you will get a zip file containing the spectra you selected plus a python script to read them in your own code and a readme file with information on what's included in the files. The spectra files come as .FITS files (including headers and multiple extensions as available) as well as a .TXT human-readable format. Both types of files will include information on the program, PI, and data reduction for each spectrum as available. If you plan on using spectra that have been observed recently (over the past ~3 years) or have not been published yet, we recommend you to get in touch with their PI for coordination on the analysis. If you are unsure, contact us, and we will confirm the publication or analysis status of a given spectrum.
The spectra included in SpExoDisks are contributed by individual researchers who have either taken the observations or obtained the data from archives, and who provided the fully reduced 1-dimensional spectra. All spectra are transformed into a standard format inside SpExoDisks which includes additional information as available (program number, PI, date, and references for the data reduction and for acknowledging use of the data). Below, we provide some information for each dataset by spectrograph, the samples currently included, and some key references.
If you wish to contribute data to the database, please get in touch with us using the contact form above, or email us at spexodisks@gmail.com
VLT-CRIRES
IRTF-iSHELL
Keck-NIRSPEC
IGRINS
VLT-VISIR
Spitzer-IRS
JWST-MIRI
The literature references of for stellar-parameter-values displayed in ExploreData page's table can be seen with a mouse-over (hover-text). Error values (when available) are displayed in parentheses with the parameter value.
This project makes use of several online astronomy databases that add context and value to the spectra included in SpExoDisks. It is this process that makes updating the SpExoDisks database automated based on stellar data, and therefore sustainable. We are grateful to all the people who maintain and contribute to these online databases which give critical context to the spectra. SpExoDisks' scientific value would be much lower without the stellar data provided by other sources.
We are extremely grateful to The SIMBAD astronomical database for maintaining an updated list of all known stellar names. We would not have been able to link spectra from different telescopes and observers to the same star without this database. With SIMBAD, we are able to maintain and automatically update our internal star-name database, cross-matching our existing stellar name records and add new records as needed. This was done by reading the SIMBAD documentation and using existing query tools in astropy. Clicking on any star name in the ExploreData page's table will take you to the SIMBAD page for that star.
We use all Gaia releases to provide stellar parameters for our database. We display the most recent release from the project website. These parameters include: distance, right ascension, declination, effective temperature and their associated errors.
The scale and speed of the GAIA archive were an inspiration during the initial development of the SpExoDisks project. This was the first time our team used a Sequential Query Language (SQL) database, and this eventually gave us the confidence to build our own SQL database for SpExoDisks.
GAIA DR3
Bailer-Jones et al. GAIA DR2
GAIA DR2
GAIA DR1
The TESS Input Catalog (TIC) is a catalog of stars that are observed by the TESS mission. This catalog is queried as part of our automatic data induction pipeline for new spectra/stars. We pull values from stellar effective temperature, log value of the surface gravity, mass, and radius. These values are available in the ExploreData page's table.
We have links to view the stars in our data set using ESA Sky. Click on the right ascension and declination values in the ExploreData page's table to view the star in ESA Sky.
The HypatiaCatalog is the sibling website and inspiration for SpExoDisks. The HypatiaCatalog team provided insight for how to display data, provide astronomy community oriented tools, as well as advices about lessons learned over years of updates and improvements to their website. HypatiaCatalog and SpExoDisks both share some common data science tools with the package autostar which does automatic name cross-matching and local database construction using query results from SIMBAD, Gaia, and TIC databases. All these services share a common developer, Caleb Wheeler, who believes that astronomy data should be free and provided with tools that make the data accessible to everyone.