Synthesizer

Synthesizer is a Python package for generating synthetic astrophysical observables. It is modular, flexible, extensible and fast.

Read the documentation here.

Getting Started

The latest stable release of Synthesizer can be installed directly using pip,

pip install cosmos-synthesizer

Please refer to the installation documentation for further information.

Note: We do not currently support Windows, to use Synthesizer on Windows please install the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Various configuration options can also be set at installation (see here).

Getting Grids

In most use cases you will need a grid of theoretical spectra. Premade grids can be downloaded from the grids data server.

Note that you can also create your own grids using (or adapting) the grid-generation repo.

Contributing

Please see here for contribution guidelines.

Citation & Acknowledgement

Please cite both of the following papers (Lovell et al. 2025, Roper et al. 2025) if you use Synthesizer in your research:

@article{Lovell2025Synthesizer,
	author = {Lovell, Christopher C. and Roper, William J. and Vijayan, Aswin P. and Wilkins, Stephen M. and Newman, Sophie and Seeyave, Louise},
	journal = {The Open Journal of Astrophysics},
	doi = {10.33232/001c.145766},
	year = {2025},
	month = {oct 9},
	publisher = {Maynooth Academic Publishing},
	title = {Synthesizer: a {Software} {Package} for {Synthetic} {Astronomical} {Observables}},
	volume = {8},
}

@ARTICLE{2025arXiv250615811R,
   author = {{Roper}, Will J. and {Lovell}, Christopher and {Vijayan}, Aswin and {Wilkins}, Stephen and {Akins}, Hollis and {Berger}, Sabrina and {Sant Fournier}, Connor and {Harvey}, Thomas and {Iyer}, Kartheik and {Leonardi}, Marco and {Newman}, Sophie and {Pautasso}, Borja and {Perry}, Ashley and {Seeyave}, Louise and {Sommovigo}, Laura},
    title = "{Synthesizer: Synthetic Observables For Modern Astronomy}",
  journal = {arXiv e-prints},
 keywords = {Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, Astrophysics of Galaxies},
     year = 2025,
    month = jun,
      eid = {arXiv:2506.15811},
    pages = {arXiv:2506.15811},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
       eprint = {2506.15811},
 primaryClass = {astro-ph.IM},
       adsurl = {https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025arXiv250615811R},
      adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

Licence

GNU General Public License v3.0