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Hi Kate,
I found my Gert Neumann panel and put it in front of the ALPY 600 spectrograph with an ATIK 428 camera. Here is the comparison between the EL panel and the internal ALPY lamp.
(This is effectively the output from the light source x the response of the grating and CCD camera)
As claimed by the supplier, the spectrum of the EL panel is smooth with no obvious lines (The small scale ripples in both spectra are from the camera QE and demonstrates one of the reasons why flat correction is important).
The EL panel could potentially be used as a flat light source for spectroscopy, even though the spectrum shape is very different from the Incandescent Halogen lamp black body curve but unfortunately there is no light from it below 4000A. (The internal Halogen lamp in the ALPY also struggles in this region but in practise it still gives enough output down to ~3600A provided a large number of flat exposures are combined to reduce the noise)
A key difference between imaging and spectroscopic flats is that it is much less important that the field is evenly illuminated since you are only sampling a small slice of the field. Even some variation in illumination along the slit is not important if you are measuring at one position eg as for a star. This means even a crude flat illumination setup can be used. I bought my ALPY before the calibration module came out and used the same flat lamp setup as I used for my LHIRES – A halogen lamp waved a couple of metres in front of the telescope aperture which was covered by a diffuser (actually a pillow case!), similar to Christian Buil’s setup here
http://www.astrosurf.com/buil/isis/guide_alpy/tuto_en.htm
This worked well and I saw no difference when I eventually got the calibration module
Cheers
Robin
EDITED: to mention the grating response
Hi Kate,
Yes I know Lothar Schanne who made those tests. I think the Neumann panels work well for high resolution spectroscopy within a limited wavelength range, particularly H alpha with the LHIRES III spectrograph which was what Lothar was doing there. For that particular application they worked better than the usual halogen lamp, matching the defects caused by dust for example. Note that some panels from different manufacturers have some sharp emission lines which make them no good for spectroscopic flats.
I don’t think they work as low resolution wide wavelength range flats (for the ALPY or LISA etc) though as they have a limited wavelength range with no output at the UV and IR ends compared with a halogen lamp. (Francois Cochard commented about this at the recent workshop)
I have a small one knocking about somewhere. I will see if I can dig it out and test it with the ALPY
Cheers
Robin
OK I found a description of using the response assistant here in the LISA tutorial (about half way down)
http://www.astrosurf.com/buil/isis/guide_lisa/tuto_en.htm
it appears it reruns the reduction of whatever spectrum data is currently set up in ISIS, but without a flat correction.(This is all hidden in the background) It then combines this with the flat and the reference spectrum (which has to be of the same object which ISIS has reduced in the background) to produce the instrument response. This is effectively the same as the usual “long hand” way of doing an instrument response but with some automation. It does seem a slightly confusing way of going about though. All very odd !
Cheers
Robin
Hi Paul,
I am at a loss to know what it is doing. It could perhaps be using the flat lamp as a reference assuming a nominal black body spectrum for the flat lamp including allowance for typical atmospheric extinction, but then why would it need the reference star library spectrum at all, and what is it comparing the library spectrum against ? It does seem to work though. I shall have a play, but I am not sure I would ever fully trust it !
Hi Paul,
That looks interesting
I have not used this before but cannot find a description of exactly what it does on Christian’s website (It is not mentioned in his ISIS change log for example where I normally look). I had assumed it just automated the usual “differential spectroscopy” procedure, using the “response” and “continuum” functions under the profile tab to calculate the response using a reference star at a particular air mass which is then used with the target star spectrum at similar air mass. Does it do something different to this?
EDIT:- rereading your paper, am I correct in saying that the response assistant calculates the response using only the flat and the reference spectrum? ie you do not need to measure the reference star?
Cheers
Robin
Looking good, Tony
I can see a couple of interesting places where the two are slightly different at ~5750 and ~6300. I wonder if the differences are real? There is a telluric O2 band at 6277A but nothing as far as I know at 5750. Christian Buil has an annotated Vega spectrum here which shows the Tellurics.
http://www.astrosurf.com/buil/us/vatlas/vatlas.htm.
If you divide your measured by the filtered library it will show up very clearly any discrepancies. It is particularly worth doing with the reference star itself which should of course match perfectly. You can use any differences to see where you might need retune your response calculation.
Cheers
Robin
Impressive stuff but my money for the “big one” (detecting life tracers in earth-like exoplanets in the goldilocks zone) is still on transit measurements rather than direct imaging eg
https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1603/
Robin
There was a piece on this on Radio 4 Front Row program on Monday.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b081l7zt#playt=0h10m55s
Some fuzzy reassurances made concerning environmental impact. eg “we don’t want to dazzle the fishes”
Robin
I measured these stars (and added a few more to better cover the spectral classes) on Saturday.
See the attached report.
I have also attached the reduced spectra as fits files if anyone wants to play with them. (Note the extension has been changed from fit to fits to be acceptable for upload to the forum. I also tried zipping them together but the forum does not allow zip files unfortunately)
The results are generally very encouraging with typically less than 2% error in relative flux from 4000-7300A. There are some larger systematic errors below 4000A which seem to be due to a small flux offset and will need further investigation. Extra precautions also need to be taken against scintillation when measuring first magnitude targets.
Cheers
Robin
Hi Steve,
You are effectively taking a spectrum of the flat lamp when you take a spectroscopic flat so you need a light source with a smooth spectrum with good output and no sharp features in the region you are interested in, which for low resolution spectra effectively means incandescent lamps only, running as hot as possible to give maximum uv, hence halogen are favoured. LEDs definitely do not meet these criteria. (At higher resolution some EL panels are ok over at some wavelengths but not from ~3600-7500A that we need) As far as I know Xenon torch bulbs (as opposed to Xenon car headlights) are incandescent filament lamps so should work ok so I dont understand why the flat using the torch looks essentially identical to your LED flat. I know it sounds silly but could you possibly have mixed up the files somehow? eg could ISIS be recalculating using the same raw files. I suggest checking back to the original raw flat images. Other than that, I have no idea what is going on !
Robin
Hi Steve,
Looking again they both look rather like typical blue white LED spectra to me eg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/White_LED.png/350px-White_LED.png
Are you sure your torch is a halogen incandescent ?
Cheers
Robin
Hi Steve,
Those do indeed look strange and very similar considering they were taken using very different light sources which should have produced very different looking flats. Are these images raw or are they the master flat after processing in ISIS? If so do the raws show the same effect? Here is a flat from my setup last night (ATK428) using the halogen lamp in the calibration module. (reduced in size)
As far as I can recall flats taken with a halogen lamp plus white sheet over front of the scope as a diffuser before I had the calibration module produced a similar flat.
Robin
Hi Tony,
See https://britastro.org/comment/2420#comment-2420 for a comparison of two different setups
Dont worry too much about matching and focal reducers though. There is no need in general to match the focal ratio of the scope to the ALPY. You can use any focal ratio scope with the ALPY down to f4. It will not change the spectrum shape or resolution. The only reason for using a focal reducer is to better match the size of your star image to the size of the slit so you can collect more of the light and go fainter. This depends only on the telescope focal length (not focal ratio) and your seeing. If the star is smaller or comparable to the slit, then you are better off without one. Even if the star is bigger than the slit, if the star is a bright one, you may still decide not to use a reducer to avoid the risk of chromatic aberrations.
Cheers
Robin
Hi Tony,
If there is any starlight overspilling the slit then yes, any improvement in the seeing will reduce that and a higher percentage of the light will get through the slit into the spectrograph. (The spectrum resolution remains unchanged though as this is determined by the slit width. This is different from slitless systems like the Star Analyser where you always get all the light but poor seeing reduces the resolution)
Cheers
Robin
Hi Steve,
gnuplot seems to be working ok for me with ISIS 5.7.0. (see attached quick example)
Do you have auto scale unchecked on the single plot?
The Y scales cannot be set independently in the double plot so it just plots the spectra as they have been scaled in processing. Your two spectra appear to be scaled to1 near H alpha which is where they match. The hotter of the two stars (eps Aur) then rises faster towards the blue end as would be expected) You could try rescaling them at 5000A say using the “profile” “normalize” function when they will cross closer to the middle of the spectrum.
There are more sophisticated plotting tools around though. For example Tim Lester has recently posted one he is developing on the ARAS forum
http://www.spectro-aras.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1596
Robin
Eps Aur is not really a good choice as a reference star. It is a famous long period eclipsing binary but is not particularly typical even outside eclipse. Using Brian Skiff’s huge database of published spectral classifications
http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=B/mk
we can see it has been classified as anything from F4i to A8i. (A hotter star would be better as it would have fewer lines)
It is also a pulsating variable star and shows varying H alpha in emission for reasons which are not exactly clear. The spectrum also has significant interstellar lines so the continuum shape may be affected by interstellar extinction. Main sequence (luminosity class v) stars are generally a better choice as reference stars as they are less likely to be variable and more likely to be typical of their spectral classification though this cannot be guaranteed unless (like the MILES stars) there is a reliable calibrated spectrum for it.
Cheers
Robin
Unless you have calibrated your flux (The Y axis) in physical units rather than just counts from the camera (which are meaningless to anyone else but you) you should always scale your spectrum in relative flux so the continuum equals 1 on average over some chosen wavelength range. ISIS does this automatically during processing.The wavelength range is your choice and can be set in ISIS under “settings” “profile domain for spectral scaling” This is also sometimes called Normalising eg in ISIS under “Profile” “Normalize” where you can also scale any spectrum in the same way.
“Rectification”, sometimes confusingly also called “Normalising” is a further step where the continuum is effectively removed to make a level spectrum where the continuum equals 1 everywhere. This obviously loses information (the shape of the continuum) so you would only do this step if you specifically needed to do so for a particular analysis. The non rectified spectrum is the one which you would publish in a database for example.
Calibrating the Y axis in absolute physical units rather than in relative flux is an advanced topic which is probably best left until you are comfortable relative flux calibration.
Cheers
Robin
Hi Steve,
I am not sure I follow what you have done.
To calculate the instrument response using a MILES star, you take a spectrum of the actual MILES star you have chosen, not one which happens to have the same spectral class. (The actual spectral class does not matter as long as it is a hot star, it is probably unreliable anyway!) That way you end up with a spectrum of the MILES star as measured with your equipment which you can directly compare with the one of the same star in the library, which was measured and calibrated by a professional. The ratio of the two is your instrument response.
You can then use this instrument response to correct a spectrum of any target measured using your setup, (even if you have no idea what the spectrum will look like) to produce a fully calibrated spectrum. (With one caveat – you should chose a MILES reference star at similar altitude to your target so the effect of atmospheric extinction is the same.)
Cheers
Robin
