Spectroastrometric Study of Ro-vibrational CO Emission from the Herbig Ae star HD~179218 with iSHELL on the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the capability of the iSHELL spectrograph on NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility to perform high-precision spectro-astrometry on the Herbig Ae star HD~179218, achieving sub-milliarcsecond accuracy in $M$-band observations.

Contribution

The paper introduces the use of iSHELL for spectro-astrometry in the $M$-band and assesses its performance on a Herbig Ae/Be star, establishing its feasibility for high-precision measurements.

Findings

iSHELL achieves sub-milliarcsecond fidelity in spectro-astrometry.

The paper details the data reduction process for $M$-band observations.

Performance of iSHELL for spectro-astrometry is validated on HD~179218.

Abstract

We present analysis of commissioning $M-$band data acquired with the infrared echelle spectrograph (iSHELL) on {\it NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility}. In this paper we describe the delivered performance of the instrument for these $M-$band observations and the data reduction process. The feasibility of using iSHELL for spectro-astrometry is tested on the Herbig Ae/Be star HD~179218 and we show that sub-milliarcsecond fidelity is achievable.