On the radial velocity calibrations in the LAMOST Medium-Resolution Spectroscopic Survey of Nebulae

TL;DR

This paper assesses and improves the radial velocity calibration accuracy in the LAMOST MRS-N survey of nebulae by analyzing systematic deviations and proposing a calibration function.

Contribution

It identifies systematic deviations in radial velocity measurements and introduces a calibration method to enhance their precision in the LAMOST nebulae survey.

Findings

Systematic deviations of RVs range from 0.2 to 4 km/s across plates.

Calibration function effectively reduces RV deviations.

Improved RV accuracy aids nebulae kinematic studies.

Abstract

Accurate radial velocity determinations of optical emission lines (i.e. [NII]${\lambda}{\lambda}$6548,6584, H${\alpha}$, and [SII]${\lambda}{\lambda}$6717,6731) are very important for investigating the kinematics and dynamics properties of nebulae. The second stage survey program of Large sky Area Multi-Object fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) has started a sub-survey of nebulae (MRS-N) which will spectroscopically observe the optical emission lines of a large sample of nebulae near the Galactic plane. Until now, 15 MRS-N plates have been observed from 2017 September to 2019 June. Based on fitting the sky emission lines in the red band spectra of MRS-N, we investigate the precision of wavelength calibration and find there are systematic deviations of radial velocities (RVs) from $\sim$0.2 to 4 km/s for different plates. Especially for the plates obtained in 2018 March, the systematic deviations of RVs can be as large as $\sim$4 km/s, which then go down to $\sim$0.2-0.5 km/s at the end of 2018 and January 2019. A RVs calibration function is proposed for these MRS-N plates, which can simultaneously and successfully calibration the systematic deviations and improve the precision of RVs.