All the Colors of HARMONI at the CRAL Open House
“HARMONI is a very complex instrument (a spectrograph) designed for the future European giant telescope, but with the puzzle we’ve prepared for you, everything will become clearer! ” Or how to try to explain with your fingers integral field spectrography and the resulting complex data reduction…
Using our instrument simulator, we generated the raw data as collected by the eight detectors of the HARMONI instrument when it observes the Antennae Galaxies. Since integral field spectroscopy allows us to obtain spectral information simultaneously at every point of the observed object, data processing enabled us to extract the information, calibrate it, and then transform it into a data cube (two spatial dimensions and one spectral dimension). It was then possible to map the chemical elements present in the Antennae Galaxies.
The different faces of the cubes show the raw data, the white image (i.e., the one including all wavelengths of the spectrum without differentiating them), maps in different wavelength ranges (ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen), and the false-color image.
The image cubes provided an opportunity for enriching discussions with the open house audience!
