Astrometric Calibration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

By J. Pier, J. Munn, R. Hindsley, G. Hennessy, S. Kent, Robert Lupton, Zeljko Ivezic U.S. Naval Observatory, Flagstaff Station, Naval Reserach Laboratory, U. N. Observatory and 2 more. 2002

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The astrometric calibration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is described. For point sources brighter than r ∼ 20, the astrometric accuracy is 45 mas rms per coordinate when reduced against the USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog and 75 mas rms when reduced against Tycho-2, with an additional 20–30 mas systematic error in both cases. The rms errors are dominated by anomalous refraction and random errors in the primary reference catalogs. The relative astrometric accuracy between the r filter and each of the other filters (u, g, i, z) is 25–35 mas rms. At the survey limit (r ∼ 22), the astrometric accuracy is limited by photon statistics to approximately 100 mas rms for typical seeing. Anomalous refraction is shown to contain components correlated over 2° or more on the sky.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

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Citations in the corpus

The Fifth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2007, methodology): “The astrometric calibration precision is better than 0.100 rms per coordinate (Pier et al. 2003).”
On Departures from a Power Law in the Galaxy Correlation Function (2003, methodology): “…et al. 1998) to image the sky in five photometric bandpasses (Fukugita et al. 1996), denoted u, g, r, i, and z.21 After astrometric calibration (Pier et al. 2003), photometric data reduction (R. H. Lupton et al. 2004, in preparation; see Lupton et al. 2001 and Stoughton et al. 2002 for…”
OPTICAL DISCOVERY OF PROBABLE STELLAR TIDAL DISRUPTION FLARES (2010, result): “This is similar to the SDSS single epoch astrometric accuracy for point sources brighter than mr ∼ 20 (Pier et al. 2003).”
CONSTRAINING THE AGE–ACTIVITY RELATION FOR COOL STARS: THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY DATA RELEASE 5 LOW-MASS STAR SPECTROSCOPIC SAMPLE (2007, background): “The SDSS (Gunn et al. 1998; Fukugita et al. 1996; York et al. 2000; Hogg et al. 2001; Gunn et al. 2006; Ivezić et al. 2004; Pier et al. 2003; Smith et al. 2002; Stoughton et al. 2002; Tucker et al. 2006) provides excellent quality spectroscopic and photometric data for examining the properties of…”
Density profiles of galaxy groups and clusters from SDSS galaxy–galaxy weak lensing (2006, methodology): “All of these data are processed by completely automated pipelines that detect and measure photometric properties of objects, and astrometrically calibrate the data (Lupton et al. 2001; Pier et al. 2003; Tucker et al. 2005).”
Strong Emission Line H II Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. I. Catalog of DR1 Objects with Oxygen Abundances from Te Measurements (2004, background): “An automated image-processing system detects astronomical sources and measures their photometric and astrometric properties (Lupton et al. 2001; Stoughton et al. 2002; Smith et al. 2002; Pier et al. 2003) and identifies candidate galaxies and quasars for multifiber spectroscopy.”
The clustering of intermediate-redshift quasars as measured by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (2012, methodology): “The imaging data were processed through a series of pipelines that perform astrometric calibr t on (Pier et al. 2003), photometric reduction (Lupton et al. 2001), and photometric calibration (Padmanabhan et al. 2008).”
The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: Direct constraints on blue galaxy intrinsic alignments at intermediate redshifts (2009, methodology): “All of the data were processed by completely automated pipelines that detect and measure photometric properties of objects, and astrometrically calibrate the data (Lupton et al. 2001; Pier et al. 2003; Tucker et al. 2006).”
Double-peaked Low-Ionization Emission Lines in Active Galactic Nuclei (2003, background): “The astrometric positions are accurate to about 0>1 (rms per coordinate) for sources brighter than r ¼ 20:5 (Pier et al. 2003).”
The size distribution of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2003, methodology): “…is described by Gunn et al. (1998); the filter system is roughly as described in Fukugita et al. (1996); the photometric calibration of the SDSS imaging data is described in Hogg et al. (2001) and Smith et al. (2002); and the accuracy of astrometric calibration is described in Pier et al. (2003).”
Measuring DA and H at z = 0.35 from the SDSS DR7 LRGs using baryon acoustic oscillations (2012, background): “The pipeline also detected and measured the photometric properties of the observed objects (Pier et al. 2003; Ivezić et al. 2004; Tucker et al. 2006; Padmanabhan et al. 2008).”
Intergalactic stars in z∼ 0.25 galaxy clusters: systematic properties from stacking of Sloan Digital Sky Survey imaging data (2005, background): “…u- , g- , r - , i- and z-bands, with a ∼54-s exposure in drift-scan mode at the dedicated 2.5-m Apache Point Observatory telescope (Fukugita et al. 1996; Gunn et al. 1998; Hogg et al. 2001; Smith et al. 2002; Pier et al. 2003), reaching ∼25 mag arcsec−2 at S/N ∼1 for a single pixel in the r-band.”
The Accretion Origin of the Milky Way’s Stellar Halo (2007, methodology): “The data are processed through pipelines to measure photometric and astrometric properties (Lupton, Gunn, & Szalay 1999; Stoughton et al. 2002; Smith et al. 2002; Pier et al. 2003; Ivezić et al. 2004; Tucker et al. 2006) and to select targets for spectroscopic follow-up.”
Selection and Photometric Properties of K+A Galaxies (2003, methodology): “All the data processing, including astrometry (Pier et al. 2003), source identification, deblending and photometry (Lupton et al. 2001), calibration (Fukugita et al. 1996; Smith et al. 2002), spectroscopic target selection (Eisenstein et al. 2001; Strauss et al. 2002; Richards et al. 2002), and…”
THE TENTH DATA RELEASE OF THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY: FIRST SPECTROSCOPIC DATA FROM THE SDSS-III APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY GALACTIC EVOLUTION EXPERIMENT (2013, methodology): “The resulting images were calibrated astrometrically (Pier et al. 2003) and photometrically (Ivezić et al. 2004; Tucker et al. 2006; Padmanabhan et al. 2008), and the properties of the detected objects were measured (Lupton et al. 2001).”