Hypercalibration: A Pan-STARRS1-based Recalibration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Photometry

Finkbeiner, D.P.; Schlafly, E.F.; Schlegel, D.J.; Padmanabhan, N.; Jurić, M.; Burgett, W.S.; Chambers, K.C.; Denneau, L.; Draper, P.W.; Flewelling, H.; Hodapp, K.W.; Kaiser, N.; Magnier, E.A.; Metcalfe, N.; Morgan, J.S.; Price, P.A.; Stubbs, C.W.; Tonry, J.L.

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.

Citation

Finkbeiner, D., Schlafly, E., Schlegel, D., Padmanabhan, N., Jurić, M., Burgett, W., …Tonry, J. (2016). Hypercalibration: A Pan-STARRS1-based Recalibration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Photometry. Astrophysical Journal, 822(2), Article 66. https://doi.org/10.3847/0004-637x/822/2/66

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 30, 2015
• Online Publication Date: May 5, 2016
• Publication Date: May 10, 2016
• Deposit Date: May 24, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 21, 2016
• Journal: Astrophysical Journal
• Print ISSN: 0004-637X
• Electronic ISSN: 1538-4357
• Publisher: American Astronomical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 822
• Issue: 2
• Article Number: 66
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3847/0004-637x/822/2/66