PHOTOMETRIC CALIBRATION OF THE FIRST 1.5 YEARS OF THE PAN-STARRS1 SURVEY

Journal Article · Mon Sep 10 00:00:00 EDT 2012 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/756/2/158· OSTI ID:22092346

Schlafly, E. F.; Finkbeiner, D. P.; Stubbs, C. W. ^[1]; Juric, M. ^[2]; Magnier, E. A.; Burgett, W. S.; Chambers, K. C.; Hodapp, K. W.; Kaiser, N.; Kudritzki, R. -P.; Morgan, J. S.; Tonry, J. L.; Wainscoat, R. J. ^[3]; Grav, T. ^[4]; Martin, N. F.; Rix, H. -W. ^[5]; Price, P. A. ^[6]

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1. Department of Physics, Harvard University, 17 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
2. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
3. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822 (United States)
4. Planetary Science Institute, 1700 East Fort Lowell, Suite 106, Tucson, AZ 8579 (United States)
5. Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Koenigstuhl 17, D-69117 Heidelberg (Germany)
6. Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 (United States)

We present a precise photometric calibration of the first 1.5 years of science imaging from the Pan-STARRS1 survey (PS1), an ongoing optical survey of the entire sky north of declination -30 Degree-Sign in five bands. Building on the techniques employed by Padmanabhan et al. in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we use repeat PS1 observations of stars to perform the relative calibration of PS1 in each of its five bands, simultaneously solving for the system throughput, the atmospheric transparency, and the large-scale detector flat field. Both internal consistency tests and comparison against the SDSS indicate that we achieve relative precision of <10 mmag in g, r, and i{sub P1}, and {approx}10 mmag in z and y{sub P1}. The spatial structure of the differences with the SDSS indicates that errors in both the PS1 and SDSS photometric calibration contribute similarly to the differences. The analysis suggests that both the PS1 system and the Haleakala site will enable <1% photometry over much of the sky.

• OSTI ID: 22092346
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 756, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ACCURACY
ASTRONOMY
ASTROPHYSICS
CALIBRATION
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
DATA ANALYSIS
ERRORS
OPACITY
PHOTOMETRY
STARS