Calibrating echelle spectrographs with Fabry-Perot etalons

Abstract

Over the past decades hollow-cathode lamps have been calibration standards for spectroscopic measurements. Advancing to cm/s radial velocity precisions with the next generation of instruments requires more suitable calibration sources with more lines and less dynamic range problems. Fabry-Perot interferometers provide a regular and dense grid of lines and homogeneous amplitudes making them good candidates for next generation calibrators. We investigate the usefulness of Fabry-Perot etalons in wavelength calibration, present an algorithm to incorporate the etalon spectrum in the wavelength solution and examine potential problems. The quasi periodic pattern of Fabry-Perot lines is used along with a hollow-cathode lamp to anchor the numerous spectral features on an absolute scale. We test our method with the HARPS spectrograph and compare our wavelength solution to the one derived from a laser frequency comb. The combined hollow-cathode lamp/etalon calibration overcomes large distortion (50 m/s) in the wavelength solution of the HARPS data reduction software. Direct comparison to the laser frequency comb bears differences of only maximum 10 m/s. Combining hollow-cathode lamps with Fabry-Perot Interferometers can lead to substantial improvements in the wavelength calibration of echelle spectrographs. Etalons can provide economical alternatives to the laser frequency comb, especially for smaller projects.

References in corpus (3)

• High-precision wavelength calibration of astronomical spectrographs with laser frequency combs
• A new list of thorium and argon spectral lines in the visible
• A laser-lock concept to reach cm/s-precision in Doppler experiments with Fabry-Perot wavelength calibrators

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