The Solar-Stellar Spectrograph: Technical information
[ Home | About | Tech Info & Data | Publications | References ] [ Site by Jeffrey Hall | Research funded by NSF ]
This page contains information about our data format, archive, reduction procedures, and observing log. Our stellar time series are included here as well. Much of the information here presupposes a graduate-level background in astronomy and observing techniques.
ARTICLES
The table of contents at right contains links to the online SSS technical information. Click any title to go to that page. Every article has a link at the end that will return you to this table of contents, or you can use the main menu item at top to return here as well. Colored links take you to pages on this site with more details or explanations. Many of the pages include summaries written at a non-technical level; these summaries appear in boldface green text.
REFERENCES
References to the literature are provided both in the articles at left and on the blog. Hover your mouse over a citation to see a tooltip with information about the reference and a link to its online version, if available. At the top of the tooltip you'll see one to five stars that indicate the accessibility of the article. 1 = all audiences, 2 = advanced layman level, 3 = professional level but readable and engaging, 4 = technical article. Following the stars is an icon indicating which online source is linked. Use the references link in the menu above to see a list of all references that appear on this site.
DATA
Overview [Brief description of the instrument and detectors ]
Spectral coverage [Precise wavelength coverage of the SSS ]
Spectral atlas [Plots of the spectral regions covered by the SSS ]
DATA REDUCTION
General Procedures
Overview of procedure [Summary of the reduction steps ]
Organization of archive [Arrangement of raw, reduced, and resource data files ]
Detailed Procedure
OIL class hierarchy [OIL UML class diagram and overview of key classes ]
Pre-reduction steps [Grafting and averaging the data frames, FITS header creation, log file descriptions ]
Debiasing [Removal of underlying background from raw data frames ]
Making Order maps [Tracing locations of spectral orders on the CCDs ]
Flat fielding [Creating flat field spectra, flat fielding target frames ]
Scattered light removal [Removing the remaining background from target frames ]
Spectrum extraction [Extracting non-normalized spectra from target frames ]
Continuum normalization [Setting solar and stellar continua to unity ]
Wavelength calibration [Creating and applying Thorium-Argon solutions ]
DATA ANALYSIS
HK spectrum stacks [Placing HK spectra at absolute intensity and creating spectrum stack files ]
Solar HK time series [Generating HK time series and results files for the Sun ]
Stellar HK time series [Generating HK time series and results files for stars ]
SOFTWARE DOCUMENTATION
About the software system [OIL (Object IDL Library) ]
System messages [Message codes used by the OIL class library ]
Startup file [IDL startup.pro file used by OIL ]
BasicFITSHeader [BasicFITSHeader class documentation ]
Bias [Bias class documentation ]
Coord [Coord class documentation ]
DataList [Datalist class documentation ]
Filelink [Filelink class documentation ]
Filestream [Filestream class documentation ]
FITSData [FITSData class documentation ]
Flat [Flat class documentation ]
Header [Header class documentation ]
Image [Image class documentation ]
Normalizer [Normalizer class documentation ]
ObArray [ObArray class documentation ]
Ordermap [Ordermap class documentation ]
Rect [Rect class documentation ]
ReduceTool [ReduceTool class documentation ]
Root [Root class documentation ]
ScatteredLight [ScatteredLight class documentation ]
Spectrum [Spectrum class documentation ]
SSS [The data reducer and analysis class ]
Tool [Tool class documentation ]
WaveCal [WaveCal class documentation]
[ Back to my home page | Email me: jch [at] lowell [dot] edu ]
The SSS is publicly funded. Unless explicitly noted otherwise, everything on this site is in the public domain.
If you use or quote our results or images, we appreciate an acknowledgment.
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