Precise reduction of solar spectra obtained with large CCD arrays

Abstract

A precise procedure suitable for the reduction of solar spectra taken with large CCD arrays and the retrieval of correct spectral characteristics is presented. Various effects, which one should take into account, are considered and several improvements of the standard reduction are introduced. A special flat-field procedure is suggested for the reduction of spectra registered in different flat-field conditions than those when the flat-field matrix was taken. The original flat-field matrix is split into several components to eliminate the influence of the drift of the spectrograph and temporal changes of the flat-field conditions on the reduced spectrum. The importance of every flat-field matrix component is tested and discussed and the noise propagation through data reduction is analyzed. It is documented that the errors of the basic spectral line characteristics, continuum intensity, line centre intensity and full width at the half maxima of the line have variations between 0.5% and 15% and the errors of the line centre Doppler velocity and bisectors fluctuate by up to 200 m s-1, if derived from imprecise reductions, compared to precise ones.