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A spatially resolved study of ionized regions in galaxies at different ...

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3.3. D<strong>at</strong>a Reduction 49<br />

Figure 3.6: Left panel: Example <strong>of</strong> a RSS <strong>of</strong> a calibr<strong>at</strong>ion lamp show<strong>in</strong>g the distortion along the<br />

cross-dispersion axis. Right panel: Example <strong>of</strong> shifts produced by a bad second order correction for<br />

distortion.<br />

po<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>g <strong>of</strong> the standard star BD+28 ◦ 4211. The cross-talk problem can affect fibers with<br />

low counts adjacent to <strong>in</strong>tense fibers. This is usually seen as a s<strong>in</strong>usoidal behaviour <strong>in</strong> the<br />

cont<strong>in</strong>uum <strong>of</strong> the spectra, produc<strong>in</strong>g spurious structure which could yield to wrong results<br />

<strong>in</strong> the <strong>in</strong>terpret<strong>at</strong>ion <strong>of</strong> the d<strong>at</strong>a 3 . To avoid the cross-talk problem, sometimes it is enough<br />

to reduce the coadd<strong>in</strong>g width, but this may produce a substantial loss <strong>of</strong> flux if the aperture<br />

is too small. This is strongly dependent on the k<strong>in</strong>d <strong>of</strong> d<strong>at</strong>a, so it is necessary to check if the<br />

simple aperture extraction does a good job and, otherwise, use the simple gaussian extraction<br />

(which is more time-consum<strong>in</strong>g).<br />

In the 2D image result<strong>in</strong>g from the aperture extraction, the X-axis corresponds to the<br />

orig<strong>in</strong>al dispersion axis, while the Y-axis corresponds to the order<strong>in</strong>g <strong>of</strong> the spectra along<br />

the pseudo-slit. This is the so-called row-stacked spectra represent<strong>at</strong>ion (RSS). Each s<strong>in</strong>gle<br />

spectrum corresponds to a particular fiber and the RSS is just a frame, where all the spectra<br />

are sorted <strong>in</strong> the rows <strong>of</strong> the frame one after another. This represent<strong>at</strong>ion is very useful<br />

because all the <strong>in</strong>form<strong>at</strong>ion can be stored <strong>in</strong> a s<strong>in</strong>gle image, preserv<strong>in</strong>g the two-dimensional<br />

structure <strong>of</strong> the d<strong>at</strong>a as detected by the CCD plane. However, an extra file is needed with<br />

additional <strong>in</strong>form<strong>at</strong>ion <strong>of</strong> the exact loc<strong>at</strong>ion (projected position) <strong>of</strong> each fiber <strong>in</strong> the sky (the<br />

“position table”).<br />

Due to the not homogeneous light dispersion along the cross-dispersion axis, spectrographs<br />

present the so-called C distortion, so th<strong>at</strong> the distortion is larger <strong>in</strong> the edges <strong>of</strong> the<br />

slit than <strong>in</strong> the center. In IFS, additional distortions are added to the <strong>in</strong>tr<strong>in</strong>sic curv<strong>at</strong>ure for<br />

gr<strong>at</strong><strong>in</strong>g spectrographs ow<strong>in</strong>g to the plac<strong>in</strong>g <strong>of</strong> the fibers <strong>in</strong> the pseudo-slit. The left panel <strong>in</strong><br />

Figure 3.6 shows a RSS where the curv<strong>at</strong>ure and distortions are seen. These distortions must<br />

3 As the case when fitt<strong>in</strong>g synthetic stellar popul<strong>at</strong>ions to the cont<strong>in</strong>uum <strong>in</strong> order to substract the underly<strong>in</strong>g<br />

popul<strong>at</strong>ion.

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