Development of ProtoPol: a medium resolution echelle spectro-polarimeter for PRL telescopes, Mt Abu, India -- Part II : the data-reduction pipeline, on-sky characterization $\&$ performance verification and first science results

TL;DR

ProtoPol is a newly developed medium resolution spectro-polarimeter for PRL telescopes, with a dedicated data reduction pipeline, demonstrating high polarization accuracy and successful first science observations of diverse stellar objects.

Contribution

This paper introduces the development of a dedicated data reduction pipeline and performance evaluation of ProtoPol, a novel spectro-polarimeter for PRL telescopes, and presents first science results.

Findings

Achieved spectral resolution of 0.4-0.75 Å across 4000-9600 Å range.

Attained a polarization accuracy of 0.1-0.2% for sources with mV≈8.

Demonstrated instrument capabilities through first science observations of various stellar types.

Abstract

We present the development of ProtoPol - a medium resolution echelle spectro-polarimeter for the PRL 1.2m and 2.5m telescopes at Mt Abu observatory, India. In this second and final part of the paper series, we report on the development of a dedicated data reduction pipeline of ProtoPol along with several characterization, performance evaluation, and scientific observations to quantify the performance of the instrument. ProtoPol provides a spectral resolution in the range of $\sim$0.4 - 0.75 angstrom across various orders in the visible wavelength range of 4000-9600 angstrom. On PRL 2.5m telescope, an SNR of 10 is achieved for $m_V\sim13.2$ source in 1 hour of integration time, and its throughput is estimated to be $\sim$6\% including all the contributing factors such as atmospheric transmission, telescope reflectivity, instrument's optics, CCD efficiency etc. ProtoPol achieved a linear polarization accuracy $\delta P \approx 0.1-0.2\%$ in 2 hours of integration time for a source with $m_V\approx8$. The instrumental polarization is determined to be around $0.1\%$. We also present the first science results with ProtoPol to demonstrate the capabilities of the instrument. A sample of Herbig Ae/Be stars, classical Herbig stars, Symbiotic stars, and AGB/post-AGB stars were observed over the period of one and half years for their spectro-polarimetry measurements covering various physical mechanisms such as intrinsic line polarization in Herbig and classical Be stars, Raman scattered features in Symbiotic stars, as well as continuum polarization in AGB/post-AGB stars to verify the polarization performance of the instrument.