NIRDust¶
NIRDust is a python package that uses K-band (2.2 micrometers) spectra to measure the temperature of the dust heated by an Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) accretion disk.
Motivation¶
K-band nuclear spectral continuum of Type 2 AGNs is often composed of two components: the stellar population emission and a hot 800 - 1600 K dust component. Via substraction of the stellar emission dust component fitting can be performed to map its prescence and estimate its temperature.
Features¶
The package uses the modeling features of astropy to fit the hot dust component of a AGN K-band spectrum with black body functions. And provide a class with methods for spectrum manipulation and normalized-blackbody-fitting. Because NIRDust normalizes the spectra before fitting, is not necessary to flux-calibrate spectra to use it.
NIRDust needs a minimum of two spectra to run: a nuclear one, where the dust temperature will be determined, and an off-nuclear spectrum, where the emission is considered to be purely stellar. The off-nuclear spectrum will be used by NIRDust to subtract the stellar emission from the nuclear spectrum.
Footnote: the hot dust component may or may not be present in your type 2 nuclei, do not get disappointed if NIRDust finds nothing.
User Documentation¶
Requeriments¶
You will need Python 3.8 or higher to run NIRDust.
