The aim of this project is to provide users of radiative transfer codes with the basic atomic and molecular data needed for the excitation calculation. Line data of a number of astrophysically interesting species are summarized, including energy levels, statistical weights, Einstein A-coefficients and collisional rate coefficients. Available collisional data from quantum chemical calculations and experiments are in some cases extrapolated to higher energies.

Currently the database contains atomic data for 3 species and molecular data for 25 different species. In addition, several isotopomers and deuterated versions are available. Work is currently underway to add more datafiles. We encourage comments from the users in order to improve and extend the database.

This database should form an important tool in analyzing observations from current and future infrared and (sub)millimetre telescopes. Databases such as these rely heavily on the efforts by the chemical physics community to provide the relevant atomic and molecular data. We strongly encourage further efforts in this direction, so that the current extrapolations of collisional rate coefficients can be replaced by actual calculations in future releases.

RADEX, a computer program for performing statistical equilibrium calculations is made publically available as part of the data base.

NEWS (30sep09): Added datafiles for CN and CH₃CN

If you use the data files in your work please refer to the publication by Schöier, F.L., van der Tak, F.F.S., van Dishoeck E.F., Black, J.H. 2005, A&A 432, 369-379 (astro-ph/0411110) introducing this data base. When individual molecules are considered, references to the original papers providing the spectroscopic and collisional data are encouraged.

Fredrik Schöier, Floris van der Tak, Ewine van Dishoeck, John Black

This research is supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) , the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) and the Swedish Research Council.