The data analysis software (DAS) for VLT ESPRESSO is aimed to set a new benchmark in the treatment of spectroscopic data towards the extremely-large-telescope era, providing carefully designed, fully interactive recipes to take care of complex analysis operations (e.g. radial velocity estimation in stellar spectra, interpretation of the absorption features in quasar spectra). A few months away from the instrument's first light, the DAS is now mature for science validation, with most algorithms already implemented and operational. In this paper, I will showcase the DAS features which are currently employed on high-resolution HARPS and UVES spectra to assess the scientific reliability of the recipes and their range of application. I will give a glimpse on the science that will be possible when ESPRESSO data become available, with a particular focus on the novel approach that has been adopted to simultaneously fit the emission continuum and the absorption lines in the Lyman-alpha forest of quasar spectra.
@article{arxiv.1808.04249,
title = {Field tests for the ESPRESSO data analysis software},
author = {Guido Cupani and Valentina D'Odorico and Stefano Cristiani and Jonay I. González-Hernández and Christophe Lovis and Sérgio Sousa and Paolo Di Marcantonio and Denis Mégevand},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.04249},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
4 pages, 1 figure; proceedings of ADASS XXVI, accepted by ASP Conference Series