2015/12/03 by Douglas P. Finkbeiner, Edward F. Schlafly, David J. Schlegel +16
Physics and Astronomy · #Apparent magnitude #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Photometric system #Photometry (optics) #Sky #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.IM
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/0004-637x/822/2/66
13 pages, 7 figures, ApJ, in press. "Hypercalibration" refers to using repeat measurements of many stars from multiple surveys to constrain calibration parameters
arxiv created 2015/12/03 · openalex publication_date 2016/05/05 · arxiv updated 2016/05/25 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
ABSTRACT We present a recalibration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) photometry with new flat fields and zero points derived from Pan-STARRS1. Using point-spread function (PSF) photometry of 60 million stars with 16 < r < 20, we derive a model of amplifier gain and flat-field corrections with per-run rms residuals of 3 millimagnitudes (mmag) in griz bands and 15 mmag in u band. The new photometric zero points are adjusted to leave the median in the Galactic north unchanged for compatibility with previous SDSS work. We also identify transient non-photometric periods in SDSS (“contrails”) based on photometric deviations co-temporal in SDSS bands. The recalibrated stellar PSF photometry of SDSS and PS1 has an rms difference of 9, 7, 7, 8 mmag in griz , respectively, when averaged over 15′ regions.