ISIS - specifying Object Name for Simbad & AOD

[Paul Luckas]

I've run into issue when trying to specify an object name in ISIS in order for the Auto Atmosphere / AOD function to access SIMBAD. How does one do this for objects that don't exist in SIMBAD, e.g. novae?

I've tried specifying a star close to the target of interest, which works - except the FITs header of the target output then reflects the wrong object name.

For example;

- When processing spectra of the Nova "ASASSN-17gk" I have my spectral images labelled ASASSN-17gk-1, ASASSN-17-gk-2, ASASSN-17gk-3, etc.
- Specifying ASASSN-17gk in the Object field in ISIS will result in an error when trying to use AOD (the look up to SIMBAD fails).
- Specifying a nearby SIMBAD star, eg UCAC 353-19291 allows ISIS to access SIMBAD for the purposes of deriving atmospheric values for that point in the sky at that time.

However, the final spectral profile's FITs header displays OBJNAME as UCAC 353-19291 instead of ASASSN-17gk, which is understandable but wrong in this instance. I can manually change OBJNAME in the fits header, but this seems inefficient.

Can anyone offer a solution?

Paul

[Paul Luckas]

I've discovered a work around. I noticed that when the SIMBAD look up fails, ISIS presents a dialogue asking to continue using some arbitrary coordinates. I noticed that the coordinates it suggests are identical to what the last values are in the heliocentric correction dialogue. So just by entering the target coordinates on the heliocentric correction page you can 'force' the SIMBAD lookup to work, even though the object name does not exist.

Sorry for the lack of images to illustrate.

I hope this is useful.

Paul