Prof.
Christopher Stubbs
(Harvard University)
4/16/12, 3:30 PM
Calibration of instruments/telescopes before and after deployment
I will present an overview of our ongoing efforts to ascertain (through direct measurement) the both instrumental response function and the variable aspects of atmospheric transmission, in the context of surveys such as PanSTARRS and LSST. We have now gained experience with the use of tunable lasers and NIST-calibrated photodiodes to ascertain the instrumental response function from multiple...
Maxwell Fagin
(Dartmouth College)
4/16/12, 4:00 PM
Earth's atmospheric effects
The ability of type Ia supernova surveys to distinguish among the various proposed theories of dark energy is presently limited by the need to reduce systematic photometry errors to significantly less than 1%. In pursuit of this goal, Stubbs and Tonry (2006) have proposed an approach to photometric calibration that deemphasizes celestial standards in favor of using a NIST-calibrated...
Dr
Jennifer L. Marshall
(Texas A&M University)
4/16/12, 4:20 PM
Calibration of instruments/telescopes before and after deployment
DECal is a new spectrophotometric calibration system for the CTIO Blanco 4 meter telescope. It is currently being installed as part of the Dark Energy Survey. The system uses a tunable light source to measure the wavelength-dependent instrumental response function of the total telescope+instrument in the range 300<λ<1100nm. The calibration will be performed regularly to monitor changes in...
Prof.
Justin Albert
(University of Victoria)
4/16/12, 4:40 PM
Intercalibration between systems
Understanding the properties of dark energy via SNIa will require unprecedented photometric precision. Laboratory and solar photometry and radiometry regularly achieve precisions on the order of parts in ten thousand, but photometric calibration for non-solar astronomy presently remains stuck at the percent or greater level. We discuss our project to erase this discrepancy, and our steps...