SimSpin v2.6.0 -- Constructing synthetic spectral IFU cubes for comparison with observational surveys

TL;DR

This paper introduces SimSpin v2.6.0, an open-source tool in R for creating synthetic IFS observations of simulated galaxies, facilitating comparison with real data and advancing galaxy kinematics studies.

Contribution

The paper presents a new, reproducible methodology and software for generating mock IFS data from simulations, supporting collaboration between observational and theoretical astrophysics.

Findings

SimSpin is used by international collaborations like SAMI and MAGPI.

The software enables consistent comparison between simulations and observations.

It accelerates understanding of galaxy kinematics evolution.

Abstract

In this work, we present a methodology and a corresponding code-base for constructing mock integral field spectrograph (IFS) observations of simulated galaxies in a consistent and reproducible way. Such methods are necessary to improve the collaboration and comparison of observation and theory results, and accelerate our understanding of how the kinematics of galaxies evolve over time. This code, SimSpin, is an open-source package written in R, but also with an API interface such that the code can be interacted with in any coding language. Documentation and individual examples can be found at the open-source website connected to the online repository. SimSpin is already being utilised by international IFS collaborations, including SAMI and MAGPI, for generating comparable data sets from a diverse suite of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations.