The identification of molecules outside our planet is a very complex endeavour. In order to prevent background noise from the Earth's own atmosphere, telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope have to be brought up to 1.5 million kilometres into space to the Lagrange point L2. However, this alone is not enough, the flood of data received is still very noisy and the target signal often only accounts for a tiny fraction of the overall intensity. Correct identification is only possible with highly accurate reference data. Part of our work therefore focusses on the provision of highly accurate IR reference data, which is usually a combination of highly accurate calculated spectra and experimental vibration spectra. The aim is to achieve a holistic assignment and a coherent notation of the vibrational spectrum of the target molecule by understanding the theoretical data.
