Semi-automated extraction of digital objective prism spectra

We describe a method for the extraction of spectra from high-dispersion objective prism plates. Our method is a catalogue-driven plate solution approach, making use of the right ascension and declination coordinates for the target objects. In contrast to existing methods of photographic plate reduction, we digitize the entire plate and extract spectra off-line. This approach has the advantages that it can be applied to CCD objective prism images and spectra can be re-extracted (or additional spectra extracted) without having to re-scan the plate. After a brief initial interactive period, the subsequent reduction procedure is completely automatic, resulting in fully reduced, wavelength-justified spectra. We also discuss a method of removing stellar continua using a combination of non-linear filtering algorithms.The method described is used to extract over 12 000 spectra from a set of 92 objective prism plates. These spectra are used in an associated project to develop automated spectral classifiers based on neural networks.