An SpecMap is a specialised form of MappingMapping which can be used to represent a sequence of conversions between standard spectral coordinate systems. This includes conversions between frequency, wavelength, and various forms of velocity, as well as conversions between different standards of rest.
When a SpecMap is first created, it simply performs a unit (null) Mapping. Using the astSpecAddastSpecAdd function, a series of coordinate conversion steps may then be added, selected from the list of supported conversions. This allows multi-step conversions between a variety of spectral coordinate systems to be assembled out of the building blocks provided by this class.
For details of the individual coordinate conversions available, see the description of the astSpecAdd function.
Conversions are available to transform between standards of rest. Such conversions need to know the source position as an RA and DEC. This information can be supplied in the form of parameters for the relevant conversions, in which case the SpecMap is 1-dimensional, simply transforming the spectral axis values. This means that the same source position will always be used by the SpecMap. However, this may not be appropriate for an accurate description of a 3-D spectral cube, where changes of spatial position can produce significant changes in the Doppler shift introduced when transforming between standards of rest. For this situation, a 3-dimensional SpecMap can be created in which axes 2 and 3 correspond to the source RA and DEC The SpecMap simply copies values for axes 2 and 3 from input to output).