Oct 2005
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005acs..rept....2b&link_type=abstract
Instrument Science Report ACS 2005-12, 18 pages
Other
Hubble Space Telescope, Hst, Space Telescope Science Institute, Flat Field Illumination, Earth Flats
Scientific paper
Since the last ISR 2003-02 on the use of Earth observations for a source of flat field illumination, several hundred more observations have been obtained with the full set of HRC standard filters and four narrow band WFC filters. While most of these observation show streaks or other nonuniform illumination, a significant subset are defect free and can be used to construct complete LP-flats. Many of the existing pipeline flats are confirmed to a precision of ~1%, which validates the stellar L-flat technique. Exceptions are the WFC, where a shutter light leak causes a systematic central contamination of a few percent and limits the verification accuracy to ~2%. Other exceptions are the four longest wavelength HRC filters, which show systematic differences with the pipeline flats. This discrepancy is apparently caused by stray light originating from the detector surface, where most of the longest wavelength photons are reflected and then scattered back from nearby focal plane structures. Because this complete set of HRC Earth flats is more appropriate than the pipeline flats for large diffuse objects such as the Moon, Jupiter, or the Orion Nebula, the set is now available on the STScI/ACS website. Earth flats also measure the small and intermediate scale P-flat structure. Due to slight deviations from OTA like illumination in the lab, the flat field corrections in the dust mote regions are 1-2% better with Earth flats. The trend found in ACS ISR 2005-09 for an increase toward the UV for more pixels with non-Poisson statistical distributions is confirmed for the F330W Earth flats, where up to 3% of the pixels are in error by >1%. Most of this newly discovered population of deviant pixels are dark with low responses; however, the effect of these erroneous P-flat values on stellar photometry is less than 0.1%.
Bohlin Ralph Charles
Hartig George
Mack Jennifer
Sirianni Marco
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