Line profile analysis of an astronomical spectrograph with a laser frequency comb

Abstract

We present a study of the spectral line shape associated with a High Resolution Spectrograph on the 2.16m telescope at the Xinglong Observing Station of National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences. This measurement is based on modeling the instrumental line shape obtained by unresolved modes from a Yb-fiber mode-locked laser frequency comb. With the current repetition rate of 250 MHz and 26 GHz mode spacing on the spectrograph, we find the absolute variation of the line center, 0.0597 pixel in the direction of the CCDs, and 0.00275 pixel (∼3 m s-1) for relative variation in successive exposures on a short timescale. A novel double-Gaussian model is presented to improve the quality of the fit by a factor of 2.47 in a typical single exposure. We also use analysis with raw moments and central moments to characterize the change in line shape across the detector. A trend in charge transfer efficiency can be found on the E2V 4096 × 4096 CCD that provides a correction for wavelength calibration aiming to reach a level of precision for radial velocity below 1 ms-1. © 2014 National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences and IOP Publishing Ltd.