Calibration of the LSST instrumental and atmospheric photometric passbands

David L. Burke; T. Axelrod; Aurélien Barrau; Sylvain Baumont; Stéphane Blondin; Charles Claver; Alexia Gorecki; Zeljko Ivezic; Lynne Jones; Victor Krabbendam; Ming Liang; Abhijit Saha; Allyn Smith; R. Christopher Smith; Christopher W. Stubbs; Christophe Vescovi; LSST Project Team

doi:10.1117/12.857236

29 July 2010 Calibration of the LSST instrumental and atmospheric photometric passbands

David L. Burke, T. Axelrod, Aurélien Barrau, Sylvain Baumont, Stéphane Blondin, Charles Claver, Alexia Gorecki, Zeljko Ivezic, Lynne Jones, Victor Krabbendam, Ming Liang, Abhijit Saha, Allyn Smith, R. Christopher Smith, Christopher W. Stubbs, Christophe Vescovi, LSST Project Team

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7737, Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems III; 77371D (2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857236
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2010, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will continuously image the entire sky visible from Cerro Pachon in northern Chile every 3-4 nights throughout the year. The LSST will provide data for a broad range of science investigations that require better than 1% photometric precision across the sky (repeatability and uniformity) and a similar accuracy of measured broadband color. The fast and persistent cadence of the LSST survey will significantly improve the temporal sampling rate with which celestial events and motions are tracked. To achieve these goals, and to optimally utilize the observing calendar, it will be necessary to obtain excellent photometric calibration of data taken over a wide range of observing conditions - even those not normally considered "photometric". To achieve this it will be necessary to routinely and accurately measure the full optical passband that includes the atmosphere as well as the instrumental telescope and camera system. The LSST mountain facility will include a new monochromatic dome illumination projector system to measure the detailed wavelength dependence of the instrumental passband for each channel in the system. The facility will also include an auxiliary spectroscopic telescope dedicated to measurement of atmospheric transparency at all locations in the sky during LSST observing. In this paper, we describe these systems and present laboratory and observational data that illustrate their performance.

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David L. Burke, T. Axelrod, Aurélien Barrau, Sylvain Baumont, Stéphane Blondin, Charles Claver, Alexia Gorecki, Zeljko Ivezic, Lynne Jones, Victor Krabbendam, Ming Liang, Abhijit Saha, Allyn Smith, R. Christopher Smith, Christopher W. Stubbs, Christophe Vescovi, and LSST Project Team "Calibration of the LSST instrumental and atmospheric photometric passbands", Proc. SPIE 7737, Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems III, 77371D (29 July 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857236

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