Processing Techniques in the Reduction and Analysis of EUVE Spectrometer Observations

The in-orbit calibration of the EUVE science package was accomplished over a period of 30 days following launch on June 7, 1992. The six-month all-sky EUV survey began on July 24, 1992, and is periodically interrupted to obtain additional calibration data. The use of calibration data for the analysis of both EUV continuum and line emitters presents a unique challenge. Measurements from the ground calibrations must be meshed with the new in-orbit observations obtained periodically throughout the mission. Astronomical sources are used to check the ground measurements. The throughput measurements and wavelength calibrations are used as a springboard to develop the analysis strategy for program target observations. In this poster we describe the processing techniques necessary to optimize the science throughput of spectrometer observations. We demonstrate how detailed consideration of detector and diffuse sky background can be used to improve the quality of the extracted spectra. We describe a method for using positional information from both the satellite and from the Deep Survey detector to improve the aspect solution for the spectrometer and thereby optimize the signal-to-noise ratio of the background-dominated spectra which typify the EUV regime. Finally, other schemes based on time filtering of data and considerations of detector peculiarities can improve the results of spectrometer observations. This work has been supported by NASA contracts NAS5-30180 and NAS5-29298.