Telluric water vapor contamination of the Mount Wilson solar Doppler measurements

It has been shown that the solar line 5250.2 (Fei) is weakly blended with a telluric line in the water vapor spectrum, and that magnetograms taken using this line are therefore inaccurate. We investigate the effects of this contamination on the Mount Wilson synoptic magnetograph data, which is based on 5250.2. Using spectrum scans taken at Kitt Peak, we model the contamination and develop a procedure that would correct for it, whenever the slant water vapor along the line of sight to the Sun is known. As this information is not available for the data collected thus far at Mount Wilson, we use the variation of determined quantities with airmass to obtain an average, or first-order, correction. Concentrating on the fitted coefficients for the solar rotation, the correction is found to be very slight, 0.5%, raising the value for the A coefficient, averaged over the period 3 December, 1985 to 22 July, 1990, from 2.8289 to 2.8422 rad s^-1, The correction also removes a slight annual variation that has become discernible in the data collected since 1986.Now at Oregon Heath Sciences University, Portland, OR, U.S.A.Now at Department of Astronomy, University of Minnesota, U.S.A.