The Effects of Spectrograph Slit Modes on the Accuracy of Stellar Radial Velocity Measurement and Atmospheric Parameter Estimation

TL;DR

This study investigates how the slit mode of the GuoShouJing spectrograph impacts the accuracy of stellar radial velocity and atmospheric parameter measurements, using synthetic spectra derived from SDSS data.

Contribution

It provides an experimental analysis of the effects of the 2/3 slit mode on measurement precision, highlighting the trade-offs between spectral resolution and data quality.

Findings

2/3 slit mode affects measurement accuracy depending on S/N ratio

Higher resolution slit modes improve radial velocity precision at the cost of efficiency

Quantitative assessment of measurement errors introduced by slit mode variations

Abstract

Spectrograph slit is conventionally used to enhance the spectral resolution and manage how much light can be allowed to enter spectrograph. A narrower slit provides a higher resolution but sacrifices efficiency of spectrograph and results in a low signal to noise ratio (S/N) spectra product. We take GuoShouJing telescope as an example and carry out a series of experiments to study how its 2/3 slit mode affects the precision of stellar radial velocity measurement and atmosphere parameters estimate. By transforming the resolution and adding a Gaussian White Noise to the extremely high quality spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we generate synthetic stellar spectra of various brightness with different S/Ns. Comparing the measurements on these noise added spectra with the original high quality ones, we summarize the influences of the 2/3 slit mode on the measurement accuracy of stellar radial velocity and atmospheric parameters.