2008/09/25 by E. O. Ofek · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Calibration #Photometric system #Photometry (optics) #Physics #Sky #Star (game theory) #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Telescope #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/592456
3 pages, PASP, in press
arxiv created 2008/09/25 · openalex publication_date 2008/10/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Photometric calibration to ∼5% level is frequently needed at arbitrary celestial location. However, existing all-sky astronomical catalogs do not reach this accuracy, and time consuming photometric calibration procedures are required. I fitted the Hipparcos B T and V T magnitudes, along with the 2MASS J , H , and K magnitudes of Tycho-2–catalog stars with stellar spectral templates. From the best-fit spectral template derived for each star, I calculated its synthetic SDSS griz magnitudes and constructed an all-sky catalog of griz magnitudes of bright stars ( V ≲ 12). Testing this method on SDSS photometric-telescope observations, I find that the photometric accuracy, for a single star, is usually about 0.12, 0.12, 0.10, and 0.08 mag (1 σ), for the g , r , i , and z -bands, respectively. However, by using ∼10 such stars, the typical errors per calibrated field (systematic + statistical) can be reduced to about 0.04, 0.03, 0.02, and 0.02 mag, in the g , r , i , and z -bands, respectively. Therefore, in cases for which several calibration stars can be observed in the field of view of an instrument, accurate photometric calibration is possible.