Image Details
Caption: Figure 5.
Example of residual sky removal in NAS observations, illustrating the performance of the sky-subtraction procedure described in Section 4.1. Adapted from Z. Lin et al. (2025) with updated residual statistics. Top: median sky spectrum measured in the sky panel (black) and the naive difference fsource − fsky. Outside the masked [O I] λ5577 region, the sky continuum level is ∼7 × 10−18 erg cm−2 s−1 arcsec−2 Å−1. Bottom: naive differencing (red) leaves residual structure at the ∼(4–8) × 10−20 erg cm−2 s−1 arcsec−2 Å−1 level. After polynomial matching of the sky spectrum, the residual (black) is statistically consistent with zero median (﹩{\tilde{S}}_{{\rm{res}}}\simeq 6\times 1{0}^{-22}﹩) and exhibits ﹩{\sigma }_{{\rm{res}}}\simeq 2\times 1{0}^{-20}﹩ erg cm−2 s−1 arcsec−2 Å−1, with fluctuations confined within ±3 × 10−20. The [O I] λ5577 line (gray shaded region) is masked due to its independent and strong temporal variability.
© 2026. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.