We present an analysis of high-resolution hydrodynamical N-body simulations of coupled dark energy cosmologies which focusses on the statistical properties of the transmitted Lyman-alpha flux in the high-redshift intergalactic medium (IGM). In these models the growth of the diffuse cosmic web differs from the standard LCDM case: the density distribution is skewed towards underdense regions and the matter power spectra are typically larger (in a scale dependent way). These differences are also appreciable in the Lyman-alpha flux and are larger than 5% (10%) at z=2-4 in the flux probability distribution function (pdf) for high transmissivity regions and for values of the coupling parameter β= 0.08 (β= 0.2). The flux power spectrum is also affected at the ~2% (~ 5-10%) level for β= 0.08 (β= 0.2) in a redshift dependent way. We infer the behaviour of flux pdf and flux power for a reasonable range of couplings and present constraints using present high and low resolution data sets. We find an upper limit β< 0.15 (at 2 sigma confidence level), which is obtained using only IGM data and is competitive with those inferred from other large scale structure probes.
We explore the prospects of using the hyperfine transition of 3He+ as a probe of the intergalactic medium. The emission signal from ionized regions during reionization is expected to be anti-correlated with 21cm maps. The predicted emission signal from Lyman-alpha blobs at lower redshifts is detectable with future radio observatories.
We have used the angular Autocorrelation Function (AcF) in a pointing with Chandra's ACIS-S instrument. However, we determined that the contribution of Chandra's background below 1 keV is too high to achieve reasonable sensitivity.
IGMtransmission is a Java graphical user interface that implements Monte Carlo simulations to compute the corrections to colours of high-redshift galaxies due to intergalactic attenuation based on current models of the Intergalactic Medium. The effects of absorption due to neutral hydrogen are considered, with particular attention to the stochastic effects of Lyman Limit Systems. Attenuation curves are produced, as well as colours for a wide range of filter responses and model galaxy spectra. Alternative filter response curves and spectra may be readily uploaded. The code is freely available f…
The thermal evolution of the intergalactic medium (IGM) can serve as a sensitive probe of cosmological heat sources and sinks. We employ it to limit interactions between dark matter and baryons. After reionization the IGM temperature is set by the balance between photoheating and adiabatic cooling. We use measurements of the IGM temperature from Lyman-$α$-forest data to constrain the cross-section $σ$ between dark matter and baryons, finding $σ< 10^{-20}$ cm$^2$ for dark-matter masses $m_χ\leq 1$ GeV. This provides the first direct constraint on scattering between dark matter and baryons at re…
Quasar spectra provide a unique opportunity to investigate the intergalactic medium at high redshifts. The spectral analysis of the Ly$α$ forest allows us to constrain the effective equation of state of the intergalactic medium and its changes during the evolution of the Universe. Based on the Voigt profile fitting of Ly$α$ forest lines in 50 high-resolution QSO spectra obtained at Keck telescope we present new measurements of the power-law index $γ$ of temperature-density relation in IGM for six redshift bins in the range $z=1.6-3.7$. We find that the IGM state is close to isothermal ($γ\appr…
The bulk of cosmic matter resides in a dilute reservoir that fills the space between galaxies, the intergalactic medium (IGM). The history of this reservoir is intimately tied to the cosmic histories of structure formation, star formation, and supermassive black hole accretion. Our models for the IGM at intermediate redshifts (2<z<5) are a tremendous success, quantitatively explaining the statistics of Lyman-alpha absorption of intergalactic hydrogen. However, at both lower and higher redshifts (and around galaxies) much is still unknown about the IGM. We review the theoretical models and meas…
Reionization is a process whereby hydrogen (and helium) in the Universe is ionized by the radiation from first luminous sources. Theoretically, the importance of the reionization lies in its close coupling with the formation of first cosmic structures and hence there is considerable effort in modelling the process. We give a pedagogic overview of different analytical approaches used for modelling reionization. We also discuss different observations related to reionization and show how to use them for constraining the reionization history.
The distribution of diffuse gas in the intergalactic medium (IGM) imprints a series of hydrogen absorption lines on the spectra of distant background quasars known as the Lyman-$α$ forest. Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations predict that IGM density fluctuations are suppressed below a characteristic scale where thermal pressure balances gravity. We measured this pressure-smoothing scale by quantifying absorption correlations in a sample of close quasar pairs. We compared our measurements to hydrodynamical simulations, where pressure smoothing is determined by the integrated thermal history…
In this white paper, we summarize current observations of the baryon census at low redshift (Shull, Smith, & Danforth 2012). Measurements of Lya, O-VI, and broad Lya absorbers, together with more careful corrections for metallicity and ionization fraction, can now account for approximately 60% of the baryons in the intergalactic medium (IGM). An additional 5 +/- 3% may reside in the circumgalactic medium (CGM), 7 +/- 2% in galaxies, and 4 +/- 1.5% in clusters. This still leaves a substantial fraction, 29 +/- 13%, unaccounted for. We suggest improvements in measuring the baryons in major compon…
Spectroscopy of the Ly$α$ forest in quasar spectra proved to be a useful tool for probing the intergalactic gas. We developed the automatic program for Voigt profile fitting of Ly$α$ forest lines. We run this code on 9 high resolution ($\sim 50000$) quasars spectra with a high signal-to-noise ratio ($\sim 50 -100$) from the Keck telescope archive and obtained the sample of single well-fitted Ly$α$ lines. Fitting the joint 2d distribution of column density and Doppler parameter from this sample by physically reasonable model we estimate a power law index $γ$ of the equation of state of the inte…
The injection and evolution of turbulence in the intergalactic medium is studied by means of mesh-based hydrodynamical simulations, including a subgrid scale (SGS) model for small-scale unresolved turbulence. The simulations show that the production of turbulence has a different redshift dependence in the intracluster medium (ICM) and the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM). We show that turbulence in the ICM is produced chiefly by merger-induced shear flows, whereas the production in the WHIM is dominated by shock interactions. Secondly, the effect of dynamical pressure support on the gravit…
After recombination the cosmic gas was left in a cold and neutral state. However, as the first stars and black holes formed within early galactic systems, their UV and X-ray radiation induced a gradual phase transition of the intergalactic gas into the warm and ionized state we currently observe. This process is known as cosmic reionization. Understanding how the energy deposition connected with galaxy and star formation shaped the properties of the intergalactic gas is one of the primary goals of present-day cosmology. In addition, reionization back reacts on galaxy evolution, determining man…
Large-scale coherent magnetic fields in the intergalactic medium are presumed to play a key role in the formation and evolution of the cosmic web, and in large scale feedback mechanisms. However, they are theorized to be extremely weak, in the nano-Gauss regime. To search for a statistical signature of these weak magnetic fields we perform a cross-correlation between the Faraday rotation measures of 1742 radio galaxies at $z > 0.5$ and large-scale structure at $0.1 < z< 0.5$, as traced by 18 million optical and infrared foreground galaxies. No significant correlation signal was detected within…
The first major star-forming galaxies and Active Galactic Nuclei will produce Balmer and higher order extended haloes during the Epoch of Reionization through the scattering of Lyman resonance line photons off the surrounding neutral intergalactic gas. The optical depth dependence of the scattering rates will produce a signal sensitive to both the density and velocity fluctuations of the gas, offering the possibility of probing the ionization region and flow field surrounding young star-forming galaxies. The requirements for detecting the haloes in the infra-red using a space-based telescope a…
Using hydrodynamical simulations, we explore the use of the mean and percentiles of the curvature distribution function to recover the equation of state of the high-$z$ ($2 < z < 4$) intergalactic medium (IGM). We find that the mean and percentiles of the absolute curvature distribution exhibit tight correlation with the temperatures measured at respective characteristic overdensities $\barΔ_i$'s at each redshift. Hence, they provide complementary probes of the same underlying temperature-density distribution, and can in principle be used to simultaneously recover both parameters $T_0$ and $γ$…
The Stephan's Quintet (SQ, HCG92) was observed with the Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) aboard AKARI in four far-infrared (IR) bands at 65, 90, 140, and 160 um. The AKARI four-band images of the SQ show far-IR emission in the intergalactic medium (IGM) of the SQ. In particular, the 160 um band image shows single peak emission in addition to the structure extending in the North-South direction along the shock ridge as seen in the 140 um band, H2 emission and X-ray emission. Whereas most of the far-IR emission in the shocked region comes from the cold dust component, shock-powered [CII]158um emissio…
The post-reionization thermal state of the intergalactic medium is characterized by a power-law relationship between temperature and density, with a slope determined by the parameter $γ$. We describe a new method to measure $γ$ using the ratio of flux curvature in the Lyman-$α$ and $β$ forests. At a given redshift, this curvature ratio incorporates information from the different gas densities traced by Lyman-$α$ and $β$ absorption. It is relatively simple and fast to compute and appears robust against several observational uncertainties. We apply this technique to a sample of 27 high-resolutio…
Twenty years of high-resolution spectroscopy at the 8-10 m class telescopes have drastically expanded our view of the gas-phase metallicity in the z>2 universe. This contribution briefly summarizes how these studies reveal a widespread metal pollution in the intergalactic medium with a median abundance [C/H] ~ -3.5 at z~3 that is increasing by a factor of ~2-3 from z~4.3 to z~2.4. At the higher densities that are typical of galactic halos, observations uncover a metallicity spread of five orders of magnitude in Lyman limit systems, ranging from super-solar ([M/H]~+0.7) to pristine ([M/H]< -4) …
In this article, the temperature-density relation of the intergalactic medium was studied in the region $1.6 \leq z < 2.0$ divided into two bins. For this purpose, the Ly-$α$ forest decomposition into individual absorption profiles was used for the study of 35 publicly available quasar spectra obtained by the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) on the Very Large Telescope (ESO) and by the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) on the Keck Telescope. For the determination of the thermal state sensitive cut-off position in the $b - N_{HI}$ distribution, the iterative fitting…
The intergalactic medium (IGM) accounts for ~90% of baryons at all epochs and yet its three dimensional distribution in the cosmic web remains mostly unknown. This is so because the only feasible way to observe the bulk of the IGM is through intervening absorption line systems in the spectra of bright background sources, which limits its characterization to being one-dimensional. Still, an averaged three dimensional picture can be obtained by combining and cross-matching multiple one-dimensional IGM information with three-dimensional galaxy surveys. Here, we present our recent and current effo…
Cosmic rays (CRs) govern the energetics of present-day galaxies and might have also played a pivotal role during the Epoch of Reionization. In particular, energy deposition by low-energy ($E \lesssim 10$ MeV) CRs accelerated by the first supernovae, might have heated and ionized the neutral intergalactic medium (IGM) well before ($z \approx 20$) it was reionized, significantly adding to the similar effect by X-rays or dark matter annihilations. Using a simple, but physically motivated reionization model, and a thorough implementation of CR energy losses, we show that CRs contribute negligibly …
We examine the proposal that the dispersion measures (DMs) and Faraday rotation measures (RMs) of extragalactic linearly-polarized fast radio bursts (FRBs) can be used to probe the intergalactic magnetic field (IGMF) in filaments of galaxies. The DM through the cosmic web is dominated by contributions from the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) in filaments and from the gas in voids. On the other hand, RM is induced mostly by the hot medium in galaxy clusters, and only a fraction of it is produced in the WHIM. We show that if one excludes FRBs whose sightlines pass through galaxy clusters, t…
We examine recent measurements of the z~2.5 intergalactic medium (IGM) which constrain the HI frequency distribution f(N) and the mean free path MFP to ionizing radiation. We argue that line-blending and the clustering of strong absorption-line systems have led previous authors to systematically overestimate the effective Lyman limit opacity, yielding too small of a MFP for the IGM. We further show that recently published measurements of f(N) at log NHI ~ 16 lie in strong disagreement, implying underestimated uncertainty from sample variance and/or systematics like line-saturation. Allowing fo…
The conditions within the ionization front of a quasar during reionization (T ~ 30,000 K, neutral hydrogen fraction ~ 0.5) are ideal for producing Lyman-alpha emission via collisional excitation of hydrogen atoms. Observations of this emission, which could subtend >10 arcmin$^2$ on the sky, would definitively demonstrate the presence of a neutral intergalactic medium at the observed epoch, placing valuable constraints on the progress of reionization. We find that the expected Lyman-alpha surface brightness is significantly weaker than previously determined and may be impossible to observe with…
We present an updated version of the so-called Madau model for the attenuation by the intergalactic neutral hydrogen against the radiation from distant objects. First, we derive a distribution function of the intergalactic absorbers from the latest observational statistics of the Ly$α$ forest, Lyman limit systems, and damped Ly$α$ systems. The distribution function excellently reproduces the observed redshift evolutions of the Ly$α$ depression and of the mean-free-path of the Lyman continuum simultaneously. Then, we derive a set of the analytic functions which describe the mean intergalactic a…
We measure the effective opacity ($τ_{eff}$) of the Intergalactic Medium (IGM) from the composite spectra of 281 Lyman-Break Galaxies (LBGs) in the redshift range $2 \lesssim z \lesssim 3$. Our spectra are taken from the COSMOS Lyman-Alpha Mapping And Tomographic Observations (CLAMATO) survey derived from the Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS) on the W.M. Keck I telescope. We generate composite spectra in two redshift intervals and fit them with spectral energy distribution (SED) models composed of simple stellar populations. Extrapolating these SED models into the Ly$α$ forest, we mea…
We present the results of Monte-Carlo simulations of three-dimensional electromagnetic cascade initiated by interactions of the multi-TeV gamma-rays with the cosmological infrared/optical photon background in the intergalactic medium. Secondary electrons in the cascade are deflected by the intergalactic magnetic fields before they scatter on CMB photons. This leads to extended 0.1-10 degree scale emission at multi-GeV and TeV energies around extragalactic sources of very-high-energy gamma-rays. The morphology of the extended emission depends, in general, on the properties of magnetic fields in…
We study 21cm and Ly$\mathrmα$ fluctuations, as well as H$\mathrmα$, while distinguishing between Ly$\mathrmα$ emission of galactic, diffuse, and scattered intergalactic medium (IGM) origin. Cross-correlation information about the state of the IGM is obtained, testing neutral versus ionized medium cases with different tracers in a seminumerical simulation setup. In order to pave the way toward constraints on reionization history and modeling beyond power spectrum information, we explore parameter dependencies of the cross-power signal between 21$\,$cm and Ly$\mathrmα$, which displays a charact…
The current observational status of the hot (log T(K) > 5.5) warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) remains incomplete. While recent observations from stacking large numbers of Cosmic Web filaments have yielded statistically significant detections, direct measurements of single objects remain scarce. The lack of such a sample currently prevents a robust analysis of the cosmic baryon content composed of the hot WHIM, which could help solve the cosmological missing baryons problem. To improve the search for the missing baryons, we used the EAGLE simulation. Our aim is to understand the metal enric…
The methods by which one characterizes the distribution of matter in cosmological simulations is intrinsically different from how one performs the same task observationally. In this paper, we make substantial steps towards comparing simulations and observations of the intergalactic medium (IGM) in a more sensible way. We present a pipeline that generates and fits synthetic QSO absorption spectra using sight lines cast through a cosmological simulation, and simultaneously identifies structure by directly analyzing the variations in HI and OVI number density. We compare synthetic absorption spec…
Baryonic feedback can significantly modify the spatial distribution of matter on small scales and create a bulk relative velocity between the dominant cold dark matter and the hot gas. We study the consequences of such bulk motions using two high resolution hydrodynamic simulations, one with no feedback and one with very strong feedback. We find that relative velocities of order $100\ \kms$ are produced in the strong feedback simulation whereas it is much smaller when there is no feedback. Such relative motions induce dipole distortions to the gas, which we quantify by computing the dipole cor…
We compute the cross-correlation between the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium and maps of Cosmic Microwave Background temperature anisotropies using a log-normal probability density function to describe the weakly non-linear matter density field. We search for this contribution in the data measured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. We use a template of projected matter density reconstructed from the Two-Micron All-Sky Redshift Survey as a tracer of the electron distribution. The spatial distribution of filaments is modeled using the recently developed Augmented Lagrangian Perturbation …
We study the contribution of the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect, generated by the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM), to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies in the Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data. We explore the concordance LambdaCDM cosmological model, with and without this kSZ contribution, using a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. Our model requires a single extra parameter to describe this new component. Our results show that the inclusion of the kSZ signal improves the fit to the data without significantly altering the b…
In the near future galaxy surveys will target Lyman alpha emitting galaxies (LAEs) to unveil the nature of the dark energy. It has been suggested that the observability of LAEs is coupled to the large scale properties of the intergalactic medium. Such coupling could introduce distortions into the observed clustering of LAEs, adding a new potential difficulty to the interpretation of upcoming surveys. We present a model of LAEs that incorporates Lyman-alpha radiative transfer processes in the interstellar and intergalactic medium. The model is implemented in the GALFORM semi-analytic model of g…
We explore potential of current and next-generation gamma-ray telescopes for the detection of weak magnetic fields in the intergalactic medium. We demonstrate that using two complementary techniques, observation of extended emission around point sources and observation of time delays in gamma-ray flares, one would be able to probe most of the cosmologically and astrophysically interesting part of the "magnetic field strength" vs. "correlation length" parameter space. This implies that gamma-ray observations with Fermi and ground-based Cherenkov telescopes will allow to (a) strongly constrain t…
The modeling of galaxy formation and reionization, two central issues of modern cosmology, relies on the accurate follow-up of the intergalactic medium (IGM). Unfortunately, owing to the complex nature of this medium, the differential equations governing its ionization state and temperature are only approximate. In this paper, we improve these master equations. We derive new expression for the distinct composite inhomogeneous IGM phases, including all relevant ionizing/recombining and cooling/heating mechanisms, taking into account inflows/outflows into/from halos, and using more accurate reco…
We explore a time-dependent energy dissipation of the energetic electrons in the inhomogeneous intergalactic medium (IGM) during the epoch of cosmic reionization. In addition to the atomic processes we take into account the Inverse Compton (IC) scattering of the electrons on the comic microwave background (CMB) photons, which is the dominant channel of energy loss for the electrons with energies above a few MeV. We show that: (1) the effect on the IGM has both local (atomic processes) and non-local (IC radiation) components; (2) the energy distribution between Hydrogen and Helium ionizations d…
We explore the use of Deep Learning to infer the temperature of the intergalactic medium from the transmitted flux in the high redshift Lyman-alpha forest. We train Neural Networks on sets of simulated spectra from redshift z=2-3 outputs of cosmological hydrodynamic simulations, including high temperature regions added in post-processing to approximate bubbles heated by Helium-II reionization. We evaluate how well the trained networks are able to reconstruct the temperature from the effect of Doppler broadening in the simulated input Lyman-alpha forest absorption spectra. We find that for spec…
We present an overview of the theory of high-redshift star and X-ray source formation, and how they affect the 21-cm background. Primary focus is given to Lyman alpha pumping and X-ray heating mechanisms at cosmic dawn, opening a new observational window for high-redshift astrophysics by generating sizable fluctuations in the 21-cm background. We describe observational prospects for power spectrum analysis and 3D tomography (imaging) of the signature of these early astrophysical sources by SKA1-LOW and SKA2.
The recently discovered fast radio bursts (FRBs), presumably of extra-galactic origin, have the potential to become a powerful probe of the intergalactic medium (IGM). We point out a few such potential applications. We provide expressions for the dispersion measure and rotation measure as a function of redshift, and we discuss the sensitivity of these measures to the HeII reionization and the IGM magnetic field. Finally we calculate the microlensing effect from an isolate, extragalctic stellar-mass compact object on the FRB spectrum. The time delays between the two lensing images will induce c…
We compare cosmological hydrodynamical simulations combined with the homogeneous metagalactic UV background (UVB) of Haardt & Madau (2012) (HM2012) to observations of the Lyman-alpha forest that are sensitive to the thermal and ionization state of the intergalactic medium (IGM). The transition from optically thick to thin photoheating predicted by the simple one-zone, radiative transfer model implemented by HM2012 predicts a thermal history that is in remarkably good agreement with the observed rise of the IGM temperature at z~3 if we account for the expected evolution of the volume filling fa…
We study the effects of galaxy formation physics on the magnetization of the intergalactic medium (IGM) using the IllustrisTNG simulations. We demonstrate that large-scale regions affected by the outflows from galaxies and clusters contain magnetic fields that are several orders of magnitude stronger than in unaffected regions with the same electron density. Moreover, like magnetic fields amplified inside galaxies, these magnetic fields do not depend on the primordial seed, i.e. the adopted initial conditions for magnetic field strength. We study the volume filling fraction of these strong fie…
Context: Fast radio bursts are transient radio pulses of extragalactic origin. Their dispersion measure is indicative of the baryon content in the ionized intergalactic medium between the source and the observer. However, inference using unlocalized fast radio bursts is degenerate to the distribution of redshifts of host galaxies. Method: We perform a joint inference of the intergalactic baryon content and the fast radio burst redshift distribution with the use of Bayesian statistics by comparing the likelihood of different models to reproduce the observed statistics in order to infer the most…
The majority of cosmic rays (CRs) generated by star-forming galaxies escape them and enter the intergalactic medium (IGM). Galactic wind termination shocks might also accelerate CRs. I show that the mean pressure of these CRs can reach to within an order of magnitude of the mean Lyman-alpha forest thermal pressure. At z >~ 1, their pressure may have even been dominant. I also demonstrate that, whichever IGM phase the CRs reside in, they contribute significantly to its pressure if its temperature is ~$10^4$ K, as long as pionic and Coulomb losses are negligible. Where CRs end up depends on the …
Most of the metals (elements heavier than helium) ever produced by stars in the member galaxies of galaxy clusters currently reside within the hot, X-ray emitting intra-cluster gas. Observations of X-ray line emission from this intergalactic medium have suggested a relatively small cluster-to-cluster scatter outside of the cluster centers and enrichment with iron out to large radii, leading to the idea that the metal enrichment occurred early in the history of the Universe. Models with early enrichment predict a uniform metal distribution at large radii in clusters, while late-time enrichment,…
We present a new method to infer parameters of the temperature-density relation in the intergalactic medium in the post-reionization epoch at $z\sim 2-4$. This method is based on the analysis of the Ly$α$ absorbers distribution over column densities and Doppler parameters by the model joint probability density function. This approach allows us to measure the power-law index $γ$ of the temperature-density relation and a certain combination of the temperature at the mean density $T_0$ and hydrogen photoionization rate $Γ$. To estimate $T_0$ and $Γ$ separately, we employ measurements of the Ly$α$…
The problem of missing baryons in the local universe remains an open question. One propose alternative is that at low redshift missing baryons are in the form of the Warm Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM). In order to test this idea, we present a detailed analysis of X-ray high-resolution spectra of six extragalactic sources, Mrk 421, 1ES 1028+511, 1ES 1553+113, H2356-309, PKS 0558-504 and PG 1116+215, obtained with the XMM-Newton Reflection Grating Spectrometer to search for signals of WHIM and/or circumgalactic medium (CGM) X-ray absorbing gas. We fit the X-ray absorption with the IONeq model,…
We have analyzed all available archival XMM-Newton observations of X Comae, a bright X-ray quasar behind the Coma cluster, to study the properties of the warm-hot intergalactic medium in the vicinity of the nearest massive galaxy cluster. The RGS observations confirm the possible presence of a Ne IX K-alpha absorption line at the redshift of Coma, although with a limited statistical significance. This analysis is therefore in line with the earlier analysis by Takei et al. (2007) based on a sub-set of these data. Its large column density and optical depth, however, point to implausible conditio…
The missing baryon problem is one of the major unsolved problems in astronomy. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright millisecond pulses with unknown origins. The dispersion measure of FRBs is defined as the electron column density along the line of sight, and accounts for every ionized baryon. Here we measure the baryon content of the Universe using 22 localized FRBs. Unlike previous works that fixed the value of dispersion measure of FRB host galaxies and ignored the inhomogeneities of the intergalactic medium (IGM), we use the probability distributions of dispersion measures contributed by hos…
We describe v02 of igmspec, a database of publically available ultraviolet, optical, and near-infrared spectra that probe the intergalactic medium (IGM). This database, a child of the specdb repository in the specdb github organization, comprises 403277 unique sources and 434686 spectra obtained with the world's greatest observatories. All of these data are distributed in a single ~25 GB HDF5 file maintained at the University of California Observatories and the University of California, Santa Cruz. The specdb software package includes Python scripts and modules for searching the source catalog…