Related papers: High Precision Calibration Pairs for Northern Luck…

We describe the final product of the North Celestial Cap Survey (NCC Survey, NCCS) - the optical-UV-IR merged catalogue for the region within 10 deg of the North Celestial Pole. The NCC region at DEC > 80 deg is poorly covered by modern…

We present BVRI photometry of 180 bright, southern nearby-star candidates. The stars were selected from the New Luyten Two-Tenths proper motion catalogue based on optical/infrared colours, constructed by combining Luytens's m(r) estimates…

Detecting companions to Cepheids is difficult. In most cases the bright pulsator overshines the fainter secondary. Since Cepheids play a key role in determining the cosmic distance scale it is crucial to find binaries among the calibrating…

Benchmark stars with known angular diameters are key to calibrating interferometric observations. With the advent of optical interferometry, there is a need for suitably bright, well-vetted calibrator stars over a large portion of the sky.…

In a continuation of our systematic search for high proper motion stars in the Digitized Sky Survey, we have completed the analysis of northern sky fields at galactic latitudes above 25 degrees. With the help of our SUPERBLINK software, a…

A high-precision calibration method for all-sky cameras has been realized using images from the Ali observatory in Tibet, providing application results for atmospheric extinction, night sky brightness, and known variable stars. This method…

Aims: To propose a method for the polarimetric calibration of large astronomical mirrors that does not require use of special optical devices nor knowledge of the exact polarization properties of the calibration target. Methods: We study…

We report the discovery of 152 new high proper motion systems (mu >= 0.4"/yr) in the southern sky (Declination = -47 degrees to 00 degrees) brighter than UKST plate R_{59F} =16.5 via our SuperCOSMOS-RECONS (SCR) search. This paper…

The potential of combining Adaptive Optics (AO) and Lucky Imaging (LI) to achieve high precision astrometry and differential photometry in the optical is investigated by conducting observations of the close 0\farcs1 brown dwarf binary…

Optical polarimeters are typically calibrated using measurements of stars with known and stable polarization parameters. However, there is a lack of such stars available across the sky. Many of the currently available standards are not…

We report J, H and K photometry of 86 stars in 40 fields in the northern hemisphere. The fields are smaller than or comparable to a 4x4 arcmin field-of-view, and are roughly uniformly distributed over the sky, making them suitable for a…

AstraLux is the Lucky Imaging camera for the Calar Alto 2.2-m telescope and the 3.5-m NTT at La Silla. It allows nearly diffraction limited imaging in the SDSS i' and z' bands of objects as faint as i'=15.5mag with minimum technical effort.…

We identify close pairs of galaxies from 278 deg^2 of Sloan Digital Sky Survey commissioning imaging data. The pairs are drawn from a sample of 330,041 galaxies with 18 < r^* < 20. We determine the angular correlation function of galaxy…

We discuss the importance of the direct link between the most accurate radio and optical reference frames that will become possible with the next-generation space astrometry missions in about a decade. The positions of more than 500 active…

A key science driver for the next generation of wide-field optical and radio surveys is the exploration of the time variable sky. These surveys will have unprecedented sensitivity and areal coverage, but will be limited in their ability to…

We present results from the application of a global photometric calibration (GPC) procedure to calibration data from the first 2 years of The Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). The GPC algorithm uses photometry of both primary standards and…

As astronomical instruments become more sensitive, the requirements for the calibration software become more stringent; without accurate calibration solutions, thermal noise levels in images will not be reached and the scientific output of…

A new polarization survey of the northern sky at 1.41 GHz is presented. The observations were carried out using the 25.6m telescope at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Canada, with an angular resolution of 36 arcmin. The data…

We describe photometric recalibration of data obtained by the asteroid survey LINEAR. Although LINEAR was designed for astrometric discovery of moving objects, the dataset described here contains over 5 billion photometric measurements for…

We present measurements in the context of a survey of southern hemisphere binary and multiple stellar systems observed with the Zorro Speckle dual diffraction-limited optical imaging camera on the 8.1m Gemini-South telescope carried out…