Fastcc: Fast Color Corrections for Broadband Radio Telescope Data

Abstract

Abstract Broadband receiver data need color corrections applying to correct for the different source spectra across their wide bandwidths. The full integration over a receiver bandpass may be computationally expensive and redundant when repeated many times. Color corrections can be applied, however, using a simple quadratic fit based on the full integration instead. Here we describe fastcc and interpcc, quick Python and IDL codes that return, respectively, color correction coefficients for different power-law spectral indices and modified blackbodies for various Cosmic Microwave Background related experiments. The codes are publicly available, and can be easily extended to support additional telescopes.