Synthesizer: Synthetic Observables for Modern Astronomy

The Journal of Open Source Software 2026 Open access

Read full text
Authors: William J Roper, Christopher C. Lovell, Aswin P. Vijayan, Stephen M. Wilkins, Hollis B. Akins, Sabrina Berger, Connor Sant Fournier, Thomas Harvey, Kartheik G. Iyer, Marco Leonardi, S. Newman, Borja Pautasso
+6 more Ashley Perry, Louise T. C. Seeyave, Laura Sommovigo, Paurush Punyasheel, Adrien Aufan Stoffels d'Hautefort, Alexander Rawlings
DOI: 10.21105/joss.09436
Cited by: 3
References: 44

Abstract

Synthesizer is a fast, flexible, modular, and extensible Python package that empowers astronomers to turn theoretical galaxy models into realistic synthetic observations-including spectra, photometry, images, and spectral cubes-with a focus on interchangeable modelling assumptions.By offloading computationally intensive tasks to threaded C++ extensions, Synthesizer delivers both simplicity and speed, enabling rapid forward-modelling workflows without requiring users to manage low-level data processing and computational details.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Astronomy and Astrophysical Research Computational Physics and Python Applications Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae

Publication details

Journal / source
The Journal of Open Source Software
Publisher
The Open Journal
Volume
11
Issue
119
Pages
9436–9436
Publication date
18 March 2026