Poster Abstracts

Name/Affiliation:  Adam Burgasser (UC San Diego)

Title:  The SpeX Prism Library 2.0: Science, Education and Art from 1000 M, L and T Dwarf Spectra

Abstract:
Over the past decade, thousands of low-resolution (R ~ 100), near-infrared (0.8-2.4 micron) spectra of the coolest stars and brown dwarfs – M, L, T and Y dwarfs – have been obtained with the SpeX spectrograph on the 3m NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. Since 2009, I have curated of a subset of these data in the SpeX Prism Library (SPL), a resource that has been utilized in over 100 studies of cool stars, brown dwarfs, exoplanets and even high redshift galaxies. Yet the SPL has largely served as a repository. In this poster I present the design and early work from SPL 2.0, which will include updated and uniformly calibrated data extractions, standardized (Virtual Observatory) data formats, integration of ancillary photometric and astrometric data, and a Python-based toolkit called SPLAT that will facilitate rapid science and student research projects. I will also demonstrate examples of how SPL data can be used for data-driven artwork/performance and public outreach/education.