Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21347403s&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #474.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.428
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The CCD detectors that we use today are very good at converting most of the light gathered by a telescope into an electronic signal without adding much noise to the process. What this means for observers is that they are now only limited by the optical quality of the telescope in how well they can measure the brightness of faint sources. Our goal was to quantify the affect of the scattered light component of telescope images, usually dominated by the quality of primary mirror coating, using empirically derived models of stellar Point Spread Functions for ground based imagers. We analyzed archived MOSAIC data from the W-Project, which used the Blanco 4m telescope in Cerro Tololo, primarily because it covered the same fields over multiple years using the same telescope, instruments, filters, and exposure times. From this data set, we selected stars using Source Extractor and performed the photometry with the IRAF package DAOPHOT. This gave an estimate of the magnitudes and magnitude errors of the stars in the fields which could be compared for data taken before and after primary mirror re-aluminizing. Here, we will present the findings of our project and discuss what future work could be done to improve the quality of science obtained from ground based telescopes.
Stewart's research was supported by the NOAO/KPNO Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Program, which is funded by the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program and the Department of Defense ASSURE program through Scientific Program Order No. 3 (AST-0243875) of the Cooperative Agreement No. AST-0132798 between the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) and the NSF.
Glaspey John
Stewart Ashley
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