Ultra Low Dispersion Spectroscopy with Gaia and Astronomical Slitless Surveys

• Main Authors: R. Hudec, L. Hudec, M. Klíma
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: CTU Central Library 2012-01-01
• Series: Acta Polytechnica
• Subjects: astronomical spectroscopy; low dispersion spectroscopy; slitless spectroscopy; Gaia
• Online Access: https://ojs.cvut.cz/ojs/index.php/ap/article/view/1504

The ultra-low dispersion spectroscopy to be applied in the ESA Gaia space observatory and the ground-based objective-prism plate surveys represent a similar type of astrophysical data. Although the dispersion in plate surveys is usually larger than in the Gaia blue and red photometers (BP/RP), the spectral resolutions differ by a factor of 2–3 only, since the resolution in ground-based spectra is seeing-limited. We argue that some of the algorithms developed for digitized objective-prism plates can also be applied for the Gaia spectra. At the same time, the plate results confirm the feasibility of observing strong emission lines with Gaia RP/BP.