Chris N. Sabbey (Yale University)
QUEST (the Quasar Equatorial Survey Team) is using a 16 CCD camera on the 1 m Venezuelan Schmidt telescope to collect 30 GB of objective prism image data each clear night. Fully automated software running on a Linux Pentium II reduces and analyses the data faster than it is acquired. Relatively bright spectra in the prism data are automatically detected and used to determine coordinate transformations to the corresponding direct images. The direct image coordinates are used to place spectrum extraction boxes, calibrate the wavelength scale, and predict and correct for spectrum overlaps. Multivariate analysis techniques are applied for spectral classification and quasar selection.