The UVES Spectral Quasar Absorption Database (SQUAD) Data Release 1: The first 10 million seconds

Understand

We present the first data release (DR1) of the UVES Spectral Quasar Absorption Database (SQUAD), comprising 467 fully reduced, continuum-fitted high-resolution quasar spectra from the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.

• The quasars have redshifts $z=0$-5, and a total exposure time of 10 million seconds provides continuum-to-noise ratios of 4-342 (median 20) per 2.5-km/s pixel at 5500 \AA.
• The SQUAD spectra are fully reproducible from the raw, archival UVES exposures with open-source software, including our UVES_popler tool for combining multiple extracted echelle exposures which we document here.
• All processing steps are completely transparent and can be improved upon or modified for specific applications.