The Mini-SiTian Array: Imaging Processing Pipeline
Abstract
As a pathfinder of the SiTian project, the Mini-SiTian (MST) array, employed three commercial CMOS cameras, represents a next-generation, cost-effective optical time-domain survey project. This paper focuses primarily on the precise data processing pipeline designed for wide-field, CMOS-based devices, including the removal of instrumental effects, astrometry, photometry, and flux calibration. When applying this pipeline to approximately 3000 observations taken in the Field 02 (f02) region by MST, the results demonstrate a remarkable astrometric precision of approximately 70--80\,mas (about 0.1\,pixel), an impressive calibration accuracy of approximately 1\,mmag in the MST zero points, and a photometric accuracy of about 4\,mmag for bright stars. Our studies demonstrate that MST CMOS can achieve photometric accuracy comparable to that of CCDs, highlighting the feasibility of large-scale CMOS-based optical time-domain surveys and their potential applications for cost optimization in future large-scale time-domain surveys, like the SiTian project.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2504.01616,
title = {The Mini-SiTian Array: Imaging Processing Pipeline},
author = {Kai Xiao and Zhirui Li and Yang Huang and Jie Zheng and Haibo Yuan and Junju Du and Linying Mi and Hongrui Gu and Yongkang Sun and Bowen Zhang and Shunxuan He and Henggeng Han and Min He and Ruifeng Shi and Yu Zhang and Chuanjie Zheng and Zexi Niu and Guiting Tian and Hu Zou and Yongna Mao and Hong Wu and Jifeng Liu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.01616},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
24 pages, 17 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in a special issue of Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics on the Mini-SiTian Array, see main results in Figures 11, 12, and 15