SPEX 2.00 is an X-ray and UV spectral fitting package, written by J. S. Kaastra at the Space Research Organisation of the Netherlands (SRON), which has been designed with the high-resolution X-ray spectra from XMM-Newton and Chandra in mind. The latest public build of SPEX 2.00 is available from the official SPEX website. This site is an unofficial quick start guide to SPEX 2.00.
This website contains the following information:
1) Instructions for converting XMM-RGS spectral files and response matrices to the SPEX format.
2) A walkthrough of the basic SPEX commands
3) A complete list of all the commands
4) More detailed descriptions of cetain commands, provided by Jelle Kaastra
5) A list of the available spectral models
6) Some example SPEX sessions geared towards AGN people
7) A SPEX walkthrough for analysing stellar spectra
8) A list of updates to the version of SPEX used at MSSL
9) The official SPEX manual in Postscript or PDF format.
Useful links:
Official SPEX website The SPEX forum where users can post questions and share knowledge The fractions of ion states present in photoionised plasma at different levels of ionisation, assuming the ionising spectral energy distribution of NGC 5548 (useful for AGN warm absorber studies)Updated: 22 February 2008
This unofficial SPEX website is maintained by Graziella Branduardi-Raymont at UCL-MSSL. It was originally produced by Alexander Blustin, who acknowledges the helpful input of J. S. Kaastra, G. Branduardi-Raymont, H. Kay and many others at MSSL and elsewhere.