Method on Using Shadow Altitude to Remove Geocoronal H$\alpha$

TL;DR

This paper presents an empirical method to remove geocoronal Hα contamination from spectroscopic data using shadow altitude, enabling clearer observations of Galactic Hα emission in large sky surveys.

Contribution

It introduces a new empirical relation between shadow altitude and geocoronal Hα emission, improving contamination removal without requiring velocity separation.

Findings

Established a relation with 23.52% scatter between shadow altitude and geocoronal Hα.

Demonstrated the method's effectiveness for large sky surveys.

Found tentative links between geocoronal emission, solar activity, and Earth-Sun distance.

Abstract

Spectroscopic surveys allow spatially resolved spectroscopy of galaxies to study their interstellar medium (ISM). However, observations of Galactic H$\alpha$ emission are contaminated by geocoronal H$\alpha$ emission. The latter is known to depend on the shadow altitude, a geometric parameter relating the line of sight to Earth's shadow cone. Using fibres on blank skys from the SDSS-IV/MaStar survey, we established an empirical relation between the geocoronal H$\alpha$ emission and the shadow altitude, with a root mean square fractional scatter of 23.52$\%$. This relation can be used to predict geocoronal H$\alpha$ emission so that it can be removed from observed spectra. This removal method is advantageous when the observed targets are extensive in the sky, and it does not require a large velocity separation between the observed target and the local standard of rest. This will enable reliable studies of Galactic H$\alpha$ in intermediate spectral resolution integral field spectroscopic surveys. We also find tentative evidences for the dependences of geocoronal emission on solar activity and the distance between the Earth and the Sun.