Forum der Vereinigung der Sternfreunde

Robin Leadbeater wrote: Hello all,

I encouraged Tom to develop Rspec as a simple, easy to use tool for Star Analyser users starting in spectroscopy. Its main strength is the real time display of reduced spectra. This helps the beginner and is useful for education.

It should not be used for scientific research though as it currently does not do all the steps necessary. For example

There is no dark or flat correction.
The simple background subtraction technique is not ideal.
The program scales spectra internally and so does not preserve the ADU counts. This means absolute flux measurements cannot be compared.

It would also need careful testing by experienced spectroscopists and checking of the algorithms used against established programs like MIDAS before it would be acceptable for scientific use. (Tom is an experienced programmer but is inexperienced in spectroscopy)

Tom is aware of these limitations. The danger is that some users may believe that the program is capable of research quality data reduction and will be disappointed when their data is rejected for Pro-Am applications.


Robin

Hi Robin,

Thanks for that explanation.

The program scales spectra internally and so does not preserve the ADU counts. This means absolute flux measurements can not be compared.