TAPAS (Transmissions Atmosphériques Personnalisées pour l’AStronomie, or Transmissions of the AtmosPhere for AStromomical data) is a web-service dedicated to provide computed atmospheric transmission in the line-of-sight to the target as indicated by the user.
The novelty of TAPAS is that it uses the actual atmospheric profile at the time and place retrieved from the ETHER atmospheric database and the transmission is computed from LBLRTM software and HITRAN database for several gases: O2, H2O, O3, CO2, CH4, N2O, and Rayleigh extinction. The resulting output can be used to identify observed spectral features having an atmospheric or astrophysical origin, serve to characterise the spectrometer wavelength solution and instrument profile. Lastly, the model spectrum can be used to correct the astronomical spectral from telluric (Earth atmospheric) spectral lines, thus obtaining the top of atmosphere (TOA) spectrum.
TAPAS is developed and maintained within the atmospheric ETHER data center. ACRI-ST provided expertise on radiative transfer (of the Earth atmosphere) and software engineering for this project:
TAPAS service (see also Bertaux et al. 2014)