The UKIRT wide field camera ZYJHK photometric system: calibration from 2MASS

By S. Hodgkin, M. Irwin, Paul Hewett, Stephen J. Warren. 2008

348 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this paper, we describe the photometric calibration of data taken with the near-infrared Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT). The broad-band ZYJHK data are directly calibrated from Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) point sources which are abundant in every WFCAM pointing. We perform an analysis of spatial systematics in the photometric calibration, both inter- and intradetector show that these are present at up to the ∼5 per cent level in WFCAM. Although the causes of these systematics are not yet fully understood, a method for their removal is developed and tested. Following the application of the correction procedure, the photometric calibration of WFCAM is found to be accurate to ≃1.5 per cent for the JHK bands and 2 per cent for the ZY bands, meeting the survey requirements. We investigate the transformations between the 2MASS and WFCAM systems and find that the Z and Y calibrations are sensitive to the effects of interstellar reddening for large values of E(B - V)', but that the JHK filters remain largely unaffected. We measure a small correction to the WFCAM Y-band photometry required to place WFCAM on a Vega system, and investigate WFCAM measurements of published standard stars from the list of UKIRT faint standards. Finally, we present empirically determined throughput measurements for WFCAM.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0303e5435d30ce4734fba60b0eb045d11a2978c9

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Citations in the corpus

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the input catalogue and star–galaxy separation (2009, methodology): “A systematic study of the calibration errors in Hodgkin et al. (2009) finds that the photometry is accurate to better than 0.02 magnitudes rms when tested against the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS; Skrutskie et al. 2006) for J, H and K bands, making a global recalibration unnecessary.”
Empirical determination of the shape of dust attenuation curves in star-forming galaxies (2011, methodology): “UKIDSS uses the UKIRT Wide Field Camera (WFCAM, Casali et al. 2007), the photometric system is described in Hewett et al. (2006), the calibraton in Hodgkin et al. (2009) and the science archive in Hambly et al. (2008).”
Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): survey diagnostics and core data release (2010, methodology): “The photometric system is described in Hewett et al. (2006) and the calibration is described in Hodgkin et al. (2009).”
THE RED MSX SOURCE SURVEY: THE MASSIVE YOUNG STELLAR POPULATION OF OUR GALAXY (2013, methodology): “The photometric system of UKIDSS is described in Hewett et al (2006), and the calibration is described in Hodgkin et al. (2009).”
Resolved stellar mass maps of galaxies. I: method and implications for global mass estimates (2009, methodology): “The UKIDSS photometric system is described in Hewett et al. (2006), and the calibration is described in Hodgkin et al. (2009).”
THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN: X-RAYS DRIVE THE UV THROUGH NIR VARIABILITY IN THE 2013 ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS OUTBURST IN NGC 2617 (2013, methodology): “The 2MASS magnitudes were translated onto the WFCAM system following Hodgkin et al. (2009).”
A STUDY OF THE DIVERSE T DWARF POPULATION REVEALED BY WISE (2013, methodology): “Ten of our candidates are available in UKIDSS Data Release 8 (Hewett et al. 2006; Lawrence et al. 2007; Casali et al. 2007; Hambly et al. 2008; Hodgkin et al. 2009).”
The VISTA deep extragalactic observations (VIDEO) survey (2012, methodology): “6 shows the difference in magnitude for the sources detected in 2MASS, adjusting the magnitudes in the VIDEO bands according to the colour equations derived from 2MASS,5 following Hodgkin et al. (2009).”
Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: The Photometric Data Set for Cosmology (2017, methodology): “The photometric system is described in Hewett et al. (2006), and the calibration is described in Hodgkin et al. (2009).”
VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV): The public ESO near-IR variability survey of the Milky Way (2009, methodology): “Calibration and quality control is done using 2MASS stars inthe frames themselves, applying colour equations to convert 2MASS photomery to the VISTA photometric system (Skrutskie et al., 2006; Hodgkin et al.,2009).”
A PANCHROMATIC VIEW OF THE RESTLESS SN 2009ip REVEALS THE EXPLOSIVE EJECTION OF A MASSIVE STAR ENVELOPE (2013, methodology): “The 2MASS magnitudes of the stars were converted to the UKIRT system following Hodgkin et al. (2009) and the stars with the magnitude errors smaller than 0.10 mag were used for the photometry calibration, which yields typically 20-30 stars.”
THE DISK POPULATION OF THE UPPER SCORPIUS ASSOCIATION (2012, methodology): “For most stars, we adopt Ks from the 2MASS Point Source Catalog orK from the seventh data release of UKIDSS, whose photometric systems are similar (Hodgkin et al. 2009).”
The structure of the Milky Way's bar outside the bulge (2015, methodology): “From DR2 onwards the zero points were calibrated from 2MASS but the photometric system is slightly different (equations 4-8 of Hodgkin et al. 2009).”
THE SDSS-III BARYON OSCILLATION SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY: QUASAR TARGET SELECTION FOR DATA RELEASE NINE (2011, methodology): “The photometric system and calibration are described in Hewett et al. (2006) and Hodgkin et al. (2009), respectively.”
THE z = 5 QUASAR LUMINOSITY FUNCTION FROM SDSS STRIPE 82 (2012, methodology): “We validated our photometry by checking against the UKIDSS catalog measurements for brighter objects (utilizing the UKIDSS calibration as described in Hodgkin et al. 2009).”
Vvv dr1: the first data release of the milky way bulge and southern plane from the near-infrared eso public survey vista variables in the via lactea (2011, methodology): “The calibra- tion procedure follows closely that of WFCAM (Hodgkin et al. 2009).”
3D-HST WFC3-SELECTED PHOTOMETRIC CATALOGS IN THE FIVE CANDELS/3D-HST FIELDS: PHOTOMETRY, PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS, AND STELLAR MASSES (2014, background): “The photometric sys- 27 http://www.naoj.org/Science/SubaruProject/SXDS/ 28 http://www.roe.ac.uk/~ciras/Scientific_ Research.html 29 http://surveys.roe.ac.uk/wsa/dr8plus_release. html tem is described in Hewett et al. (2006), and the calibration is described in Hodgkin et al. (2009).”
THE HAWAII INFRARED PARALLAX PROGRAM. II. YOUNG ULTRACOOL FIELD DWARFS (2016, methodology): “Our synthesized Y − J colors have uncertainties of 0.05mag, and UKIDSS DR10 photometry have systematic errors of ≈0.02mag in Y and ≈0.015mag in JHK (Hodgkin et al. 2009).”