Guido Cupani
Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste

Abstract
The Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectral Observations (ESPRESSO@VLT) is an extremely stable high-resolution spectrograph which is currently being developed by an international consortium including CAUP as well. With its groundbreaking characteristics (resolution up to ~200,000; wavelength range from 380 to 780 nm; centimeter-per-second accuracy in wavelength calibration; possibility to use all 4 VLT unit telescope at once) ESPRESSO is aimed to be a real "science machine" – i.e., an instrument whose subsystems are designed in a fully-integrated way to directly extract science information from the observations. In particular, ESPRESSO will be the first ESO instrument to be equipped with a dedicated tool for the analysis of data, the Data Analysis Software (DAS). A part of the DAS will be devoted to the analysis of quasar (QSO) spectra, which is relevant for a number of major science cases (study of the physical and chemical processes acting on the Inter-Galactic Medium, determination of the Dark Matter power spectrum from the statistics of the Lyman-alpha forest, assessment of the possible variability of the fundamental constants along the cosmic time). In this talk, I will present my work on the QSO-branch of the DAS. I will describe the details of the pipeline and its interface, focusing in particular on the new technique for the determination of the continuum level of emission in QSO spectra. The scientific importance of a carefully-designed, physically-motivated algorithms will be highlighted throughout.

2014 January 29, 13:30

IA/U.Porto
Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto (Auditorium)
Rua das Estrelas, 4150-762 Porto