The Cassini Atlas Of Stellar Spectra


CAOSS comprises of near infrared low-resolution spectra of bright stars recovered from space-based observations by the Cassini spacecraft. The atlas is dominated by red giant stars, but also contains spectra of nearby bright stars from many other spectral classes. The spectra presented are free of all spectral contamination caused by the Earth's atmosphere, including the detrimental telluric molecular bands which put parts of the near infrared spectrum out of reach of terrestrial observations. With a single instrument, a spectro-photometric dataset is recovered that continuously spans the near infrared from 0.8 to 5.1 microns. Spectra have been calibrated into absolute flux units after careful characterisation of the instrumental spectral efficiency. Spectral energy distributions for most stars match closely with literature values.

The data reduction process is described in detail by Stewart et. al. 2015 (ApJ Supplement, under review).

The data is available as a four column IPAC ASCII table, a fits image, or Python Pickle, with the columns being centre wavelength, flux density (Jy), error in centre wavelength, and error in flux density in all formats.

The correction described in Section 3 of Stewart et. al. 2015 is available in ASCII, FITS, or as a Python Pickle.

CAOSS can be downloaded as a single file containing all data products from all epochs of all stars, as either a tarball or a zip file. (~7MB)


Spectral Class References

A26 - Adams, W.~S., Joy, A.~H., \& Humason, M.~L.\ 1926, \apj, 64, 225
B54 - Bidelman, W.~P.\ 1954, \apjs, 1, 175
B85 - Bidelman, W.~P.\ 1985, \apjs, 59, 197
C79 - Cohen, M.\ 1979, \mnras, 186, 837
E57 - Evans, D.~S.\ 1957, Monthly Notes Astron.\ Soc.\ Southern Africa, 16, 4
E60 - Eggen, O.~J.\ 1960, \mnras, 120, 448
G48 - Greenstein, J.~L.\ 1948, \apj, 107, 151
G50 - Gascoigne, S.~C.~B.\ 1950, \mnras, 110, 15
H58 - Hoyle, F., \& Wilson, O.~C.\ 1958, \apj, 128, 604
H72 - Humphreys, R.~M., Strecker, D.~W., \& Ney, E.~P.\ 1972, \apj, 172, 75
H75 - Houk, N., \& Cowley, A.~P.\ 1975, Univ.\ of Michigan Catalogue of Two-Dimensional Spectral Types for the HD Stars. Vol.\ I (Ann Arbor, MI: Univ.\ of Michigan)
J26 - Joy, A.~H.\ 1926, \apj, 63, 281
K42 - Keenan, P.~C.\ 1942, \apj, 95, 461
K45 - Keenan, P.~C., \& Hynek, J.~A.\ 1945, \apj, 101, 265
K74 - Keenan, P.~C., Garrison, R.~F., \& Deutsch, A.~J.\ 1974, \apjs, 28, 271
K80 - Keenan, P.~C., \& Boeshaar, P.~C.\ 1980, \apjs, 43, 379
K89 - Keenan, P.~C., \& McNeil, R.~C.\ 1989, \apjs, 71, 245
L66 - Landi Dessy, J.\ \& Keenan, P.~C.\ 1966, \apj, 146, 587
M43 - Morgan, W.~W., Keenan, P.~C., \& Kellman, E.\ 1943, An Atlas of stellar Spectra, with an outline of spectral classification (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press)
M53 - Morgan, W.~W., Harris, D.~L., Johnson, H.~L.\ 1953, \apj, 118, 92
M73 - Morgan, W.~W., \& Keenan, P.~C.\ 1973, \araa, 11, 29
P67 - Pesch, P.\ 1967, \apj, 147, 381
R52 - Roman, N.~G.\ 1952, \apj, 116, 122
S44 - Sanford, R.~F.\ 1944, \apj, 99, 145
T08 - Teodoro, M., Damineli, A., Sharp, R.~G., Groh, J.~H., \& Barbosa, C.~L.\ 2008, \mnras, 387, 564
W52 - Woolley, R.~V.~D.~R., Gottlieb, K., \& Przybylski, A.\ 1952, \mnras, 112, 665
W57 - Wilson, O.~C., \& Vainu Baapu, M.~K.\ 1957, \apj, 125, 661
W73 - Wing, R.~F., \& Lockwood, G.~W.\ 1973, \apj, 184, 873
Y67 - Yamashita, Y.\ 1967, Publ.\ Dominion Astroph.\ Obs.\ 13, 47

Variablity Reference

Variablity for all targets is taken from the General Catalogue of Variable Stars.

Uncalibrated Spectra

The spectra listed below were processed in the same manner as those above, however did not yield resultant spectra consistent with the literature. Most of these are due to stellar flux loss where a PSF lands in the interpixel dead zone discussed in Section 2.1 of the CAOSS paper. Caution is advised when using these spectra.