SimSpin—Constructing mock IFS kinematic data cubes. (2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Harborne, Katherine E.; Power, Chris; Robotham, Aaron S. G.
• Is Part Of: Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia. Volume 37(2020)
• Publication Date: 2020
• Subjects: galaxies: evolution, -- galaxies: kinematics and dynamics, -- methods: numerical, -- virtual observatory tools; Astronomy -- Periodicals; Southern sky (Astronomy) -- Periodicals; Astrophysics -- Periodicals; Periodicals; 520.5
• DOI: 10.1017/pasa.2020.8
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1323-3580

Abstract

Abstract: We present SimSpin, a new, public, software framework for generating integral field spectroscopy (IFS) data cubes from N -body/hydrodynamical simulations of galaxies, which can be compared directly with observational datasets. SimSpin provides a consistent method for studying a galaxy's stellar component. It can be used to explore how observationally inferred measurements of kinematics, such as the spin parameter $\lambda_R$, are impacted by the effects of, for example, inclination, seeing conditions, distance. SimSpin is written in R and has been designed to be highly modular, flexible, and extensible. It is already being used by the astrophysics community to generate IFS-like cubes and FITS files for direct comparison of simulations to observations. In this paper, we explain the conceptual framework of SimSpin ; how it is implemented in R; and we demonstrate SimSpin 's current capabilities, providing as an example a brief investigation of how numerical resolution affects how reliably we can recover the intrinsic stellar kinematics of a simulated galaxy.