A SPECX ``Cookbook''

SPECX is a versatile spectral line data reduction package written by Rachael Padman (Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, U.K), and supported also by Starlink and local effort at the Joint Astronomy Centre in Hilo, Hawaii. It is made available to all users at the JCMT, and a standalone version can be downloaded from the JCMT home page on the Web.¹

This guide (``Cookbook'', perhaps) was first written long ago<sup>2</sup> to help the novice SPECX user get a spectrum on the screen and do some simple data reduction. The original aim is preserved in this version: it is not meant to be a complete manual on all the facets of SPECX; the definitive words on any topic contained in this section will be found in the full SPECX manual, written by Rachael Padman, and which should be readily to hand at the JCMT, Hale Pohaku, and at the JAC. For questions regarding the way SPECX works, the staff scientist assigned to support your observing run should be able to assist in the more mundane `how-to' questions; don't bother the software group with these. This ``Cookbook'' is available on the WWW in Postscript and HTML at http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/JCMT/astroman/. It is likely that the Web versions will be more up-to-date than any printed version.