Correction tools for atmospheric telluric absorption and emission

The following software tools to correct astronomical observations for telluric absorption and emission are provided. The tools have been developed for ESO by our team at the Institute for Astro- and Particle Physics.

Correcting observations for telluric absorption

Molecfit

Molecfit is an instrument-independent software tool to correct astronomical observations for atmospheric absorption features, based on fitting synthetic transmission spectra to astronomical data. It can also estimate molecular abundances, especially the water vapour content of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Screenshot from a users feedback (courtesy Miwa Goto, LMU, Munich).
The 7 main molecules were used for the fit. (click to zoom)

Sky emission subtraction for observations without plain sky information

Skycorr

Skycorr provides an advanced instrument-independent correction tool that removes emission lines in science spectra by means of sky spectra taken at a different time and sky location. The algorithm adapts a reference sky spectrum to a science spectrum by correcting differences due to temporal and spatial airglow variability and issues related with the instrument or the data reduction.

Current members of the group are: