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Bandpasses

Constructing a Bandpass

Bandpass objects represent the transmission fraction of an astronomical filter as a function of dispersion (photon wavelength, frequency or energy). They are basically simple containers for arrays of these values, with a couple special features. To get a bandpass that is in the registry (built-in):

>>> import sncosmo
>>> band = sncosmo.get_bandpass('sdssi')
>>> band
<Bandpass 'sdssi' at 0x...>

To create a Bandpass directly, you can supply arrays of wavelength and transmission values:

>>> wavelength = [4000., 5000.] >>> transmission = [1., 1.] >>> sncosmo.Bandpass(wavelength, transmission, name='tophatg') <Bandpass 'tophatg' at 0x...>

By default, the first argument is assumed to be wavelength in Angstroms. To specify a different dispersion unit, use a unit from the astropy.units package:

>>> import astropy.units as u >>> wavelength = [400., 500.] >>> transmission = [1., 1.] >>> Bandpass(wavelength, transmission, wave_unit=u.nm) <Bandpass 'tophatg' at 0x...>

Using a Bandpass

A Bandpass acts like a continuous 1-d function, returning the transmission at supplied wavelengths (always in Angstroms):

>>> band([4100., 4250., 4300.])
array([ 0.,  1.,  1.])

Note that the transmission is zero outside the defined wavelength range. Linear interpolation is used between the defined wavelengths.

Bnadpasses have a few other useful properties. You can get the range of wavelengths where the transmission is non-zero:

>>> band.minwave(), band.maxwave()
(4000.0, 5000.0)

Or the transmission-weighted effective wavelength:

>>> band.wave_eff 4500.0

Or the name:

>>> band.name 'tophatg'

Adding Bandpasses to the Registry

You can create your own bandpasses and use them like built-ins by adding them to the registry. Suppose we want to register the 'tophatg' bandpass we created:

>>> sncosmo.register(band, 'tophatg')

Or if band.name has been set:

>>> sncosmo.register(band) # registers band under band.name

After doing this, we can get the bandpass object by doing

>>> band = sncosmo.get_bandpass('tophatg')

Also, we can pass the string 'tophatg' to any function that takes a ~sncosmo.Bandpass object. This means that you can create and register bandpasses at the top of a script, then just keep track of string identifiers throughout the rest of the script.