Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
For hot and rapidly rotating stars, the considerably wide line profile is spread over several echelle orders and thus a precise data reduction before merging several spectral orders together is required to obtain reliable results. As we show, the usage of automatic pipelines or wrong application of general reduction procedures may result in periodic ripple disturbances in the shape of the apparent stellar continuum and by this way introduce considerable errors into the determination of fundamental astrophysical quantities as gravity and mass of the stars.