A brief introductory guide to TLUSTY and SYNSPEC

Abstract

This is the first of three papers that present a detailed guide for working with the codes {\sc tlusty} and {\sc synspec} to generate model stellar atmospheres or accretion disks, and to produce detailed synthetic spectra. In this paper, we present a very brief manual intended for casual users who intend to use these codes for simple, well defined tasks. This paper does not present any background theory, or a description of the adopted numerical approaches, but instead uses simple examples to explain how to employ these codes. In particular, it shows how to produce a simple model atmosphere from the scratch, or how to improve an existing model by considering more extended model atoms. This paper also presents a brief guide to the spectrum synthesis program {\sc synspec}.