Telluric standard stars added to the Xshooter data collection

Published: 22 Aug 2017

Telluric standard stars added to the Xshooter data collection

The 1D spectra for telluric standard stars are now added to the Xshooter data collection as stand-alone science-grade spectra. These telluric standard stars are measured frequently during most nights in order to provide a representative reference for telluric absorption lines. They thus provide high-signal-to-noise reference spectra for telluric correction, and science-grade spectra of early-type and solar-type stars at different epochs, from the beginning of Xshooter operations in October 2009 until present. About 30000 new 1D spectra have been added to the Xshooter data collection for a list of 1000 target stars; these numbers will be growing as new 1D spectra are added to the Xshooter data collection.

The products consist of extracted, wavelength-calibrated and flux-calibrated 1-dimensional spectra in tabular format following the established standard for ESO science data products. There are normally spectra for all three XSHOOTER arms (UVB, VIS, NIR). They often come as multiple exposures with exposure times optimized “on the fly”. Often some of these exposures are saturated, and they should be carefully checked for quality. When downloaded, each spectrum comes with ancillary information related to quality control and observational circumstances, and with a preview plot. Data have been pipeline-processed with the best available calibration data. For more details please refer to the associated release description.

Telluric standard star spectra can be downloaded as spectra products from the Xshooter collection by querying using an object list, for example by using the Hipparcos catalogue, or queried here:
http://archive.eso.org/wdb/wdb/adp/phase3_spectral/form?collection_name=XSHOOTER&prog_id=60.A-9022(C)