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Title: Instrumental Response Model and Detrending for the Dark Energy Camera

Journal Article · · Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [2];  [7];  [7]
  1. Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States)
  2. National Optical Astronomy Observatory, La Serena (Chile)
  3. IIT Hyderabad, Telangana (India)
  4. Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  5. Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL (United States); National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana, IL (United States)
  6. National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana, IL (United States)
  7. Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
  8. Excellence Cluster Universe, Garching (Germany); Ludwig-Maximilians Univ. Munchen, Munchen (Germany)
+ Show Author Affiliations

We describe the model for mapping from sky brightness to the digital output of the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) and the algorithms adopted by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) for inverting this model to obtain photometric measures of celestial objects from the raw camera output. This calibration aims for fluxes that are uniform across the camera field of view and across the full angular and temporal span of the DES observations, approaching the accuracy limits set by shot noise for the full dynamic range of DES observations. The DES pipeline incorporates several substantive advances over standard detrending techniques, including principal-components-based sky and fringe subtraction; correction of the "brighter-fatter" nonlinearity; use of internal consistency in on-sky observations to disentangle the influences of quantum efficiency, pixel-size variations, and scattered light in the dome flats; and pixel-by-pixel characterization of instrument spectral response, through combination of internal-consistency constraints with auxiliary calibration data. This article provides conceptual derivations of the detrending/calibration steps, and the procedures for obtaining the necessary calibration data. Other publications will describe the implementation of these concepts for the DES operational pipeline, the detailed methods, and the validation that the techniques can bring DECam photometry and astrometry within $$\approx 2$$ mmag and $$\approx 3$$ mas, respectively, of fundamental atmospheric and statistical limits. In conclusion, the DES techniques should be broadly applicable to wide-field imagers.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Contributing Organization:
DES Collaboration
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515; AST-1615555; SC0007901
OSTI ID:
1410603
Journal Information:
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 129, Issue 981; ISSN 0004-6280
Publisher:
Astronomical Society of the PacificCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 32 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (11)

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and Milky Way Science journal July 2017
First Data Release of the All-sky NOAO Source Catalog journal August 2018
First Cosmology Results Using Type Ia Supernovae from the Dark Energy Survey: Photometric Pipeline and Light-curve Data Release journal March 2019
Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Detection of Intracluster Light at Redshift ∼ 0.25 journal April 2019
The Dark Energy Survey: Data Release 1 journal November 2018
A Search for Optical Emission from Binary Black Hole Merger GW170814 with the Dark Energy Camera journal March 2019
GROWTH on S190426c: Real-time Search for a Counterpart to the Probable Neutron Star–Black Hole Merger using an Automated Difference Imaging Pipeline for DECam journal August 2019
The Dark Energy Survey: Data Release 1 text January 2018
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and Milky Way Science text January 2017
First Cosmology Results Using Type Ia Supernovae From the Dark Energy Survey: Photometric Pipeline and Light Curve Data Release text January 2018
Dark Energy Survey Year 1 results: Detection of Intra-cluster Light at Redshift $\sim$ 0.25 text January 2018

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Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
methods: data analysis
techniques: photometric