SALT Longslit Line Atlas

The here presented line data are based on arc-lamp observations (longslit) obtained between September 2011 and March 2012. The wavelength coverage (in particular of the high-resolution gratings) is not complete but fair except for the bluest and reddest regions. The plots show typical exposures for all gratings and representative grating angles. Also given are lists of the presented example files and their grating characteristics.

The lines were mainly selected from early line data available for SALT (October 2011) and the NIST web-pages. The lines were preferentially selected for high-resolution gratings, and faint lines and the blending of close-by lines in low resolution exposures may still confuse the automatic line detector in specidentify at this stage (May 2012). Therefore there are two line data files available for the Argon lamp, that is, the low-resolution line data excludes many of the problem cases while sufficient lines are left to be identified in areas where many lines appear. No such separation has been made for the other arc-lamp data.

Details on the various arc lamp lines and plots for different gratings (as of July 2009) can also be found in the SALT documentAtlas of Reference Spectra for RSS Observations by A. Kniazev.

Arc Lamp Line Atlas

The line data files are in ascii format with wavelength in Ångstrøm, a relative intensity (only as rough estimates in the present case since specidentify as of yet does not make use of intensities) and a comment column. Please note that these files are not a final version but at this stage (May 2012) serve mainly to identify lines in all parts of the spectrum except for the most extreme parts where lines are sparse. Furthermore, there are a few unidentified strong lines, probably from contamination by other elements.

Argon high-resolution line atlas
Argon low-resolution line atlas
Thorium-Argon line atlas
Copper-Argon line atlas
Mercury-Argon line atlas
Neon-Argon line atlas (the Neon arc-lamp shows a significant contamination by Argon most of the time (though, for example, not in Dec 2011).
Xenon line atlas

Arc Lamp Plots

The plots are one pdf-file per arc-lamp, with the line identification done by specidentify. They are sorted by grating (PG3000 comes first, PG0900 or PG0300 comes last) and grating angle (see figure captions). The list of exposures and their characteristics is given in an ascii file. In some cases where there are very bright as well as faint lines to be identified, there are two plots, where the second is a zoom-in of the first plot.

Argon high-resolution plot and exposure list.
Argon low-resolution plot and exposure list.
Thorium-Argon plot and exposure list.
Copper-Argon plot and exposure list.
Mercury-Argon plot and exposure list.
Neon-Argon plot and exposure list.
Xenon plot and exposure list.

Sky Lines

In addition to the arc lamp data, here is a first iteration of a sky line atlas and plot by Curtis McCully. He fitted the sky spectrum with mpfit in IDL with a number of Gaussians at the central wavelength from Iraf’s identify task. The strength of a line was taken from the height of the Gaussian (as opposed to the area), while the width of all of the Gaussians was fixed so they should be equivalent. The weaker lines are a little suspect because they might be enhanced by the continuum.

Sky line atlas and line plot