An Improved Photometric Calibration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Imaging Data

By Nikhil Padmanabhan, David Schlegel, Douglas P. Finkbeiner, John C. Barentine, M. Blanton, H. Brewington, James E. Gunn, M. Harvanek, David W. Hogg, Željko Ivezic´ and 14 more. 2007

516 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present an algorithm to photometrically calibrate wide-field optical imaging surveys, which simultaneously solves for the calibration parameters and relative stellar fluxes using overlapping observations. The algorithm decouples the problem of “relative” calibrations from that of “absolute” calibrations; the absolute calibration is reduced to determining a few numbers for the entire survey. We pay special attention to the spatial structure of the calibration errors, allowing one to isolate particular error modes in downstream analyses. Applying this to the SDSS imaging data, we achieve ~1% relative calibration errors across 8500 deg2 in griz; the errors are ~2% for the u band. These errors are dominated by unmodeled atmospheric variations at Apache Point Observatory. These calibrations, dubbed “ubercalibration,” are now public with SDSS Data Release 6 and will be a part of subsequent SDSS data releases.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Computational Mechanics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cfb28d90b751696ea669ff815bb67f10701b94f5

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Computational Mechanics

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

Galaxy Zoo: the dependence of morphology and colour on environment (2008, methodology): “Our photometry is from the SDSS DR6 Ubercal (Padmanabhan et al. 2008).”
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).”
PHOTOMETRIC CALIBRATION OF THE FIRST 1.5 YEARS OF THE PAN-STARRS1 SURVEY (2012, methodology): “We modified the algorithm of Padmanabhan et al. (2008) slightly to incorporate including an external source of photometry in the calibration.”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog: Sixteenth Data Release (2020, methodology): “SDSS-IV/eBOSS used the same DR8 imaging as SDSS-III/ BOSS, but leveraged new photometric calibrations using the “uber-calibration” method of Padmanabhan et al. (2008), updated by Schlafly et al. (2012) to be pinned to PanSTARRS imaging (Kaiser et al. 2010).”
The clustering of the SDSS DR7 Main Galaxy Sample I: a 4 per cent distance measure at z=0.15 (2014, methodology): “These surveys obtained wide-field CCD photometry (Gunn et al. 1998, 2006) in five passbands (u, g, r, i, z; Fukugita et al. 1996), internally calibrated using the ‘uber-calibration’ process described in Padmanabhan et al. (2008), amassing a total footprint of 11,663 deg2.”
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).”
Evolution of the AGN UV luminosity function from redshift 7.5 (2018, background): “Contrary to their claim, photometric errors have a small effect on the colour distribution of SDSS quasars given the statistical errors of < 0.03 mag in gri for 90 per cent of the SDSS DR7 bright quasar sample (i < 19.1) and a relative calibration error of ∼ 1 per cent (Padmanabhan et al. 2008).”
Wide-Field InfrarRed Survey Telescope-Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets WFIRST-AFTA 2015 Report (2015, methodology): “Finally, the multiple passes per filter support internal self-calibration as has been performed in SDSS (e.g. Padmanabhan et al. 2008).”
THE CLUSTERING OF MASSIVE GALAXIES AT z ∼ 0.5 FROM THE FIRST SEMESTER OF BOSS DATA (2010, methodology): “The imaging data were processed through a series of pipelines that perform astrometric calibration (Pier et al. 2003), photometric reduction (Lupton et al. 2001), and photometric calibration (Padmanabhan et al. 2008).”
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).”
THE SPATIAL STRUCTURE OF MONO-ABUNDANCE SUB-POPULATIONS OF THE MILKY WAY DISK (2011, methodology): “…2003), source identification, deblending, and photometry (Lupton et al. 2001), calibration (Fukugita et al. 1996; Hogg et al. 2001; Smith et al. 2002; Ivezić et al. 2004; Padmanabhan et al. 2008), and spectroscopic fiber placement (Blanton et al. 2003), are performed with automated SDSS software.”
Mapping stellar content to dark matter haloes using galaxy clustering and galaxy–galaxy lensing in the SDSS DR7 (2015, methodology): “The imaging data were photometrically and astrometrically calibrated (Padmanabhan et al. 2008), and from this imaging data targets were selected for spectroscopic follow-ups with a fibre–fed double spectrograph (Gunn et al. 2006).”
THE METALLICITY DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONS OF SEGUE G AND K DWARFS: CONSTRAINTS FOR DISK CHEMICAL EVOLUTION AND FORMATION (2011, background): “…et al. 2011), telescope and camera (Gunn et al. 2006, 1998), astrometric (Pier et al. 2003) and photometric (Ivezić et al. 2004) accuracy, photometric system (Fukugita et al. 1996), and photometric calibration (Hogg et al. 2001; Smith et al. 2002; Tucker et al. 2006; Padmanabhan et al. 2008).”
SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey Data Release 12: galaxy target selection and large-scale structure catalogues (2015, methodology): “As part of this effort, the original SDSS-I/II data and the SDSS-III data were reduced with the latest versions of the SDSS image processing and calibration pipelines (Lupton et al. 2001; Pier et al. 2003; Padmanabhan et al. 2008).”
Dependence of galaxy quenching on halo mass and distance from its centre (2012, methodology): “We obtained ugriz photometry (“petro” values) and redshifts from the NYU-VAGC (DR7) catalogue (Blanton et al. 2005b; Adelman-McCarthy et al. 2008; Padmanabhan et al. 2008) and used these data as input to the K-correction utilities of Blanton & Roweis (2007) (v4 2) to calculate Vmax from the r-band…”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog: Twelfth data release (2016, methodology): “Objects were detected and their properties were measured by the photometric pipeline (Lupton et al. 2001; Stoughton et al. 2002) and calibrated photometrically (Smith et al. 2002; Ivezić et al. 2004; Tucker et al. 2006; Padmanabhan et al. 2008), and astrometrically (Pier et al. 2003).”
A SIMPLE LIKELIHOOD METHOD FOR QUASAR TARGET SELECTION (2011, methodology): “Padmanabhan et al. (2008) present an algorithm which uses overlaps between SDSS imaging scans to photometrically calibrate the SDSS imaging data.”
THINK OUTSIDE THE COLOR BOX: PROBABILISTIC TARGET SELECTION AND THE SDSS-XDQSO QUASAR TARGETING CATALOG (2010, methodology): “…the data processing, including astrometry (Pier et al. 2003), source identification, deblending and photometry (Lupton et al. 2001), and calibration (Fukugita et al. 1996; Hogg et al. 2001; Smith et al. 2002; Ivezić et al. 2004; Padmanabhan et al. 2008) are performed with automated SDSS software.”
STELLAR MASSES AND STAR FORMATION RATES FOR 1 M GALAXIES FROM SDSS+WISE (2015, methodology): “…galaxy sample as compiled in the New York University Value-Added Galaxy Catalog (NYU-VAGC, Blanton et al. 2005; AdelmanMcCarthy et al. 2008; Padmanabhan et al. 2008) 3, which contains 858,365 galaxies with reliable redshift measurements (OBJTYPE=GALAXY, Zwarning=0), distributed as shown in…”