Photometric Calibrations for 21st Century Science
Abstract
The answers to fundamental science questions in astrophysics, ranging from the history of the expansion of the universe to the sizes of nearby stars, hinge on our ability to make precise measurements of diverse astronomical objects. As our knowledge of the underlying physics of objects improves along with advances in detectors and instrumentation, the limits on our capability to extract science from measurements is set, not by our lack of understanding of the nature of these objects, but rather by the most mundane of all issues: the precision with which we can calibrate observations in physical units. We stress the need for a program to improve upon and expand the current networks of spectrophotometrically calibrated stars to provide precise calibration with an accuracy of equal to and better than 1% in the ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared portions of the spectrum, with excellent sky coverage and large dynamic range.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0903.2799,
title = {Photometric Calibrations for 21st Century Science},
author = {Stephen Kent and Mary Elizabeth Kaiser and Susana E. Deustua and J. Allyn Smith and Saul Adelman and Sahar Allam and Brian Baptista and Ralph C. Bohlin and James L. Clem and Alex Conley and Jerry Edelstein and Jay Elias and Ian Glass and Arne Henden and Steve Howell and Randy A. Kimble and Jeffrey W. Kruk and Michael Lampton and Eugene A. Magnier and Stephan R. McCandliss and Warren Moos and Nick Mostek and Stuart Mufson and Terry D. Oswalt and Saul Perlmutter and Carlos Allende Prieto and Bernard J. Rauscher and Adam Riess and Abhijit Saha and Mark Sullivan and Nicholas Suntzeff and Alan Tokunaga and Douglas Tucker and Robert Wing and Bruce Woodgate and Edward L. Wright},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0903.2799},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
8 pages, 6 figures Science white paper for the Astro2010 Decadal Survey