Optimal Techniques in Two-dimensional Spectroscopy: Background Subtraction for the 21st Century

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

26 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in PASP, Figures with full resolution available at http://www.ociw.edu/~kelson

Scientific paper

10.1086/375502

In two-dimensional spectrographs, the optical distortions in the spatial and dispersion directions produce variations in the sub-pixel sampling of the background spectrum. Using knowledge of the camera distortions and the curvature of the spectral features, one can recover information regarding the background spectrum on wavelength scales much smaller than a pixel. As a result, one can propagate this better-sampled background spectrum through inverses of the distortion and rectification transformations, and accurately model the background spectrum in two-dimensional spectra for which the distortions have not been removed (i.e. the data have not been rebinned/rectified). The procedure, as outlined in this paper, is extremely insensitive to cosmic rays, hot pixels, etc. Because of this insensitivity to discrepant pixels, sky modeling and subtraction need not be performed as one of the later steps in a reduction pipeline. Sky-subtraction can now be performed as one of the earliest tasks, perhaps just after dividing by a flat-field. Because subtraction of the background can be performed without having to ``clean'' cosmic rays, such bad pixel values can be trivially identified after removal of the two-dimensional sky background.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Optimal Techniques in Two-dimensional Spectroscopy: Background Subtraction for the 21st Century does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Optimal Techniques in Two-dimensional Spectroscopy: Background Subtraction for the 21st Century, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Optimal Techniques in Two-dimensional Spectroscopy: Background Subtraction for the 21st Century will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-476275

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.