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N. Pirzkal, A. Pasquali, E. Daddi, J. R. Walsh, R. N. Hook (ST-ECF/ESO)
The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which has recently been installed on HST, provides for both grism and prism slitless spectroscopy. Observations with these modes can potentially contain hundreds of spectra on the large format ACS detectors. Routine and robust extraction of the spectra of individual objects is highly desirable. We have developed a new extraction software package, called aXe, which was specifically designed to handle ACS spectrophotometric data. Using a pair of direct/grism or direct/prism images, aXe can extract tilted spectra, estimate and subtract the local background, wavelength calibrate, flat-field and flux calibrate these data.
An increasing number of instruments on modern telescopes perform slitless spectrophotometric observations similar to those of ACS. aXe was therefore designed to be applicable to non-ACS data. Examples of the use of aXe to extract spectra from FORS/VLT slitless and multi-aperture spectroscopy, as well as simulated ACS grism data, are presented.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34
© 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.