When the Hubble Space Telescope captures slitless spectroscopic observations, it creates a beautiful chaos—thousands of overlapping rainbow spectra from distant galaxies scattered across a single image. Each spectrum holds the key to measuring cosmic distances and revealing the chemical fingerprints of stars and galaxies billions of light-years away. But extracting meaningful science from this spectral symphony has traditionally been like trying to untangle a cosmic knot.
Grizli revolutionizes this process by moving beyond simple spectrum extraction to comprehensive modeling of entire grism observations. Built specifically for Hubble’s WFC3 infrared grism modes, it can simultaneously fit the overlapping spectra of hundreds of objects, accounting for contamination, multiple position angles, and complex dispersal patterns. The software handles the full pipeline from raw grism images to precise redshift measurements and emission line fluxes, transforming what was once a painstaking manual process into an automated analysis powerhouse.
Developed for both the research community and survey programs, Grizli has been battle-tested on major Hubble programs and continues to unlock the redshift universe. Whether you’re studying galaxy evolution, measuring precise distances to supernovae, or hunting for high-redshift galaxies in the early universe, this toolkit transforms Hubble’s grism capabilities into a precision cosmological instrument.
⭐ Stars: 85
💻 Language: Python
🔗 Repository: gbrammer/grizli