An atlas of bright star spectra in the near infrared from Cassini-VIMS

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Cassini Atlas Of Stellar Spectra (CAOSS), a space-based near-infrared spectral dataset of bright stars, free from atmospheric contamination, covering 0.8 to 5.1 microns with calibrated fluxes.

Contribution

The first space-based, low-resolution near-infrared spectral atlas of bright stars, providing contamination-free data from 0.8 to 5.1 microns with absolute flux calibration.

Findings

Spectra match literature values closely.

Data covers a wide wavelength range from 0.8 to 5.1 microns.

All data are publicly available online.

Abstract

We present the Cassini Atlas Of Stellar Spectra (CAOSS), comprised of near-infrared low-resolution spectra of bright stars recovered from space-based observations by the Cassini spacecraft. The 65 stellar targets in the atlas are predominately M, K and S giants. However it also contains spectra of other bright nearby stars including carbon stars and main sequence stars from A to F. The spectra presented are free of all spectral contamination caused by the Earth's atmosphere, including the detrimental telluric molecular bands which put parts of the near-infrared spectrum out of reach of terrestrial observations. With a single instrument, a spectro-photometric dataset is recovered that spans the near-infrared from 0.8 to 5.1 microns with spectral resolution ranging from R=53.5 to R=325. Spectra have been calibrated into absolute flux units after careful characterisation of the instrumental spectral efficiency. Spectral energy distributions for most stars match closely with literature values. All final data products have been made available online.