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SPIRE Spectrometer Dark Sky Observations

For faint sources, the subtraction of instrument, telescope and background emission is particularly important. Optimum subtraction can be performed in several ways (read the SPIRE Data Reduction Guide for details):

1. Subtract the Dark Sky spectrum closest to your observation (use the "Background Subtraction" script in HIPE)
2. Subtract the spectrum of surrounding detectors (use the "Background Subtraction" script in HIPE)

Dark Sky observations are observed on every SPIRE Spectrometer OD, and are all public in the Archive. A listing of the available Dark Sky observations can be found on the HSC Spire Instrument and Calibration Web Pages (the public Twiki).