Lines and continuum sky emission in the NIR

Existing spectra at low/medium resolution cannot disentangle the true sky-continuum from instrumental effects (e.g. diffuse light in the wings of strong lines). We aim to obtain, for the first time, a high resolution infrared spectrum deep enough to set significant constraints on the continuum emission between the lines in the H-band.

During the second commissioning run of the GIANO high-resolution spectrograph at the La Palma Observatory, we pointed the instrument directly to the sky and obtained a deep spectrum that extends from 0.97 to 2.4 micron and includes the whole H-band. The spectrum shows about 1500 emission lines, a factor of two more than in previous works. Of these, 80% are identified as OH transitions; half of these are from highly excited molecules (hot-OH component).