eXtended CASA Line Analysis Software Suite (XCLASS) ^⋆,⋆⋆

¹ I. Physikalisches Institut, Universität zu Köln, Zülpicher Str. 77, 50937 Köln, Germany
e-mail: moeller@ph1.uni-koeln.de
² Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Giessenbachstrasse 1, 85748 Garching, Germany

Received: 17 August 2015
Accepted: 22 September 2016

Abstract

The eXtended CASA Line Analysis Software Suite (XCLASS) is a toolbox for the Common Astronomy Software Applications package (CASA) containing new functions for modeling interferometric and single dish data. Among the tools is the myXCLASS program which calculates synthetic spectra by solving the radiative transfer equation for an isothermal object in one dimension, whereas the finite source size and dust attenuation are considered as well. Molecular data required by the myXCLASS program are taken from an embedded SQLite3 database containing entries from the Cologne Database for Molecular Spectroscopy (CDMS) and JPL using the Virtual Atomic and Molecular Data Center (VAMDC) portal. Additionally, the toolbox provides an interface for the model optimizer package Modeling and Analysis Generic Interface for eXternal numerical codes (MAGIX), which helps to find the best description of observational data using myXCLASS (or another external model program), that is, finding the parameter set that most closely reproduces the data.