The optical high-resolution spectral archive of the HERMES spectrograph mounted on the 1.2m Mercator telescope

Abstract

Context. The HERMES spectrograph is a high-resolution, fibre-fed optical spectrograph of the 1.2m Mercator telescope operated from the Roque de los Muchachos observatory in Spain. HERMES started its scientific operations in June 2009 and has been the workhorse instrument since then. Regular instrument updates have been crucial. They have helped to ensure the continued provision of high-quality spectra. This will continue both now and in the future. Aims. With this contribution we review over 16 years of HERMES operations and we launch and introduce the archive to the interna- tional community at large. We describe the overall performances of the HERMES spectrograph and list the most important instrument upgrades since the start of the operations. We release about 150 000 high-resolution spectra to the community and describe global properties of the datarelease. We use a standard propriety period of 1 year with some exceptions. Methods. We used the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (GAVO) DaCHS platform to present the archive in a Virtual Ob- servatory (VO) compatible form with both an access via a dedicated webinterface, and via VO-compliant tools like PyVO, TOPCAT, Aladin etc. We illustrate the use in several worked-out examples to search and download the fully wavelength-calibrated, cosmic- cleaned and barycentric corrected 1D spectra. Results. With this contribution we provide the needed information of the data product and offer a reference paper for the users of the HERMES archive.

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BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{winckel2026optical,
  title = {{The optical high-resolution spectral archive of the HERMES spectrograph mounted on the 1.2m Mercator telescope}},
  author = {Hans Van Winckel and Saskia Prins and Gert Raskin and Jesus Perez Padilla and Wim Pessemier and Wim De Meester and Maarten Dirickx and Yves Frémat and Alain Jorissen and Holger Lehmann and Kwinten Missiaen and Maddalena Reggiani and Hugues Sana and Andrew Tkachenko and Bart Vandenbussche and Christoffel Waelkens},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.22029},
  eprint = {2609.22029},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.22029},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - The optical high-resolution spectral archive of the HERMES spectrograph mounted on the 1.2m Mercator telescope
AU  - Hans Van Winckel
AU  - Saskia Prins
AU  - Gert Raskin
AU  - Jesus Perez Padilla
AU  - Wim Pessemier
AU  - Wim De Meester
AU  - Maarten Dirickx
AU  - Yves Frémat
AU  - Alain Jorissen
AU  - Holger Lehmann
AU  - Kwinten Missiaen
AU  - Maddalena Reggiani
AU  - Hugues Sana
AU  - Andrew Tkachenko
AU  - Bart Vandenbussche
AU  - Christoffel Waelkens
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/15
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.22029
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.22029
AB  - Context. The HERMES spectrograph is a high-resolution, fibre-fed optical spectrograph of the 1.2m Mercator telescope operated from the Roque de los Muchachos observatory in Spain. HERMES started its scientific operations in June 2009 and has been the workhorse instrument since then. Regular instrument updates have been crucial. They have helped to ensure the continued provision of high-quality spectra. This will continue both now and in the future. Aims. With this contribution we review over 16 years of HERMES operations and we launch and introduce the archive to the interna- tional community at large. We describe the overall performances of the HERMES spectrograph and list the most important instrument upgrades since the start of the operations. We release about 150 000 high-resolution spectra to the community and describe global properties of the datarelease. We use a standard propriety period of 1 year with some exceptions. Methods. We used the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (GAVO) DaCHS platform to present the archive in a Virtual Ob- servatory (VO) compatible form with both an access via a dedicated webinterface, and via VO-compliant tools like PyVO, TOPCAT, Aladin etc. We illustrate the use in several worked-out examples to search and download the fully wavelength-calibrated, cosmic- cleaned and barycentric corrected 1D spectra. Results. With this contribution we provide the needed information of the data product and offer a reference paper for the users of the HERMES archive.
ER  -

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