ITERA: IDL Tool for Emission-line Ratio Analysis

Abstract

We present a new software tool to enable astronomers to easily compare observations of emission line ratios with those determined by photoionization and shock models, ITERA, the IDL Tool for Emission-line Ratio Analysis. This tool can plot ratios of emission lines predicted by models and allows for comparison of observed line ratios against grids of these models selected from model libraries associated with the tool. We provide details of the libraries of standard photoionization and shock models available with ITERA, and, in addition, present three example emission line ratio diagrams covering a range of wavelengths to demonstrate the capabilities of ITERA. ITERA, and associated libraries, is available from \url{http://www.brentgroves.net/itera.html}Comment: Accepted for New Astronomy, 3 figures. ITERA tool available to download from http://www.brentgroves.net/itera.htm