Echelle spectroscopy course in Ondřejov
In the week of August 30-September 3, 2021, the first year of lectures dedicated to echelle spectroscopy and radial velocity determinations was held at the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Ondřejov. Six MSc. students from the Masaryk University in Brno and Charles University in Prague learned how to reduce echelle spectra and estimate radial velocities in the IRAF package, as well as to determine radial velocities in various software packages (e.g. Exostriker) under the supervision of Dr. Marek Skarka, Dr. Petr Kabáth and their doctoral students Mgr. Magdalena Špoková and Mgr. Ján Šubjak. The emphasis was put on the practical work in the way that each of the students had to go through all the steps of the data reduction and analysis on his/her own. To cover the most possible diversity of the issues that can come up during the analysis, the students reduced data with different quality. In addition, they analysed three objects with different amplitude of the radial velocities that they did not know in advance. For example, one of the objects was an exoplanetary candidate that has the radial velocity amplitude under the detection limit of the used instrument. For the tutorial, we used archival spectra obtained with the Ondřejov echelle spectrograph mounted on the 2m Perek telescope. Except for the work, there was also space for other common activities such as the welcome party. The project was supported by the ERASMUS+ project.