Megacam Photometric Calibration

Photometric calibration of Megacam data S.Prunet, with help from P.Fouquéand S. Gwyn I. 2013 ELIXIR STATE OF THE ART have in particular compiled the measured transmissions of all optical elements of the Megacam/Megaprime in- Traditionally, the elixir pipeline (Magnier and Cuil- strument (including the primary mirror, the wide field landre 2004) has been using the standard stars observed corrector optics, the filters themselves, and the CCD by Smith et al. (2002)to establish an absolute photo- QEs). On the other hand, precise measurements of metric calibration scale for Megacam data. This set of the atmospheric absorption properties above Maunakea standard stars is the basis of the absolute calibration have been done with the SNIFS spectrograph on the UH of the SDSS photometric survey, and is used by Smith 88”telescope by Buton et al. (2013), allowing a complete et al. (2002) to establish the correspondance between the characterisation of the Megacam photometric system. (now standard) u’g’r’i’z’ Sloan photometric system first Together with the precise, absolutely calibrated, faint introduced by Fukugita et al. (1996), and the more tra- spectro-photometric standards observed with the HST ditional Johnson-Morgan-Cousins photometric system in the context of the CALSPEC spectral library (Bohlin (see e.g. Mermilliod et al. 1997). et al. 2014), they give the possibility of computing syn- This choice of standard stars to establish a reference thetic AB magnitudes of the CALSPEC standards. photometric system for Megacam data presents however In order to investigate the quality of the original several difficulties: “Megacam-SDSS” photometric equations used originally in elixir to establish zero point estimates, based on the 1. for a typical Megacam run dominated by scattered Smith et al. (2002) measurements, I did some obser- pointings (P.I. data), the chance to find some of vations with Megacam on two well-studied CALSPEC the standard stars in the observed fields is very stars, P177D and P330E, for which I could compute syn- small, so that specific “calibration” observations thetic magnitudes from their CALSPEC spectra. This must be done in all bands during the run. The spa- allowed me to make two independent zero point es- tially scattered nature of the standard stars chosen timates for the same run, one using elixir on the Smith by Smith et al. (2002), while adpated to a large et al. (2002)standards observed during the run and the survey like the SDSS, implies that any such cali- elixir photometric equations, and the second by directly bration observation contains at most a few stan- comparing the synthetic and observed magnitudes of the dard stars. This in turn implies that zero point two CALSPEC stars. Comparing these two zero- estimates based on these stars are bound to have point estimates showed a reasonable agreement large statistical errors. in the griz bands, but a 0.15 mag discrepency ' 2. This set of standard stars were chosen in particu- in the u band. lar for their known spectroscopic properties, and Using the BD17 Star (both observed bySmith et al. were thus relatively bright (typical magnitude of (2002) and part of the CALSPEC spectral library), we r0 10). This in turn implied to take some of could compare directly the (predicted) BD17 Megacam the⇠ calibration observations out of focus, possibly magnitudes using the Smith et al. (2002)measurement introducing systematic errors in the photometry. and the elixir photometric equations, and the synthetic magnitudes using the CALSPEC spectrum and the mea- 3. Finally, the filters, CCDs and optical elements of sured Megacam spectral transmissions. This lead us the USNO telescope at Flagsta↵, used in Smith to predict that zero-point estimates of elixir based on et al. (2002), were close but not precisely equiv- BD17 would be systematically high by 0.13 mag in the alent to their counterparts on the 2.5m SDSS u band (see annex A for details). telescope at Apache Point Observatory. This Although we were not able to trace exactly the lead in particular the SDSS team to re-label the origin of the color equations in elixir, we believe that 2.5m telescope photometric bands as ugriz (with- the source of the discrepency could be linked to the out quotes) to make the distinction between these confusion between the primed (USNO) and unprimed two photometric system that were designed to be (APO 2.5m) photometric systems, which were designed equivalent. to be equivalent but showed significant di↵erences in Since then, the SNLS team, to fully exploit their deep practice (comparison of the elixir original color terms photometric survey using Megacam data, have inves- with http://www.astro.uvic.ca/~pritchet/SN/ tigated in much detail the di↵erent photometric sys- Calib/ColourTerms-2006Jun19/index.html#Sec04 tems (Megacam, 2.5m and USNO) and their relation- let us think that they are equal to the Megacam to ships (Betoule et al. 2013, Regnault et al. 2009). They unprimed magnitudes, while the Smith et al. (2002) 2 standard magnitudes used in the zero point estimates (2009). In practice, although specific observations had are in the primed photometric system). been made every semester, the last photometric grid so- All these problems led us to change the set of “stan- lution in production was done in 2008. For all these dard” stars used to calibrate the Megacam images: we reasons, and the need to obtain rapidly new grid so- are now using as absolute calibrators the set of ter- lutions for the new filters, it was decided to bring the tiary Megacam standards measured in the SNLS deep photometric grid analysis software from the SNLS team fields over many epochs by the SNLS team. This cata- to CFHT. log gives absolutely calibrated natural Megacam mag- Following Regnault et al. (2009) for a little while, nitudes of more than 10000 stars in a single Mega- the idea is to relate the observed magnitude of a star cam pointing, which solves also the problem of the i at position x to the magnitude it would have at a poor statistical quality of the zero point estimates us- reference position xoin the focal plane (chosen near ing the Smith et al. (2002)standards. We used the the center of the mosaic, but can be arbitrary), with version 3.2 of the catalog, that can be downloaded a color-independent, space-dependent mapping of zero http://supernovae.in2p3.fr/snls_sdss/.Thezero point fluctuations δz(x), and a color-dependent, space- point estimates based on these tertiary standards are dependent term δk(x), via a linear model: in good agreement with those obtained from m (x)=m (x )+δz(x)+δk(x) (col col )(x ) (1) the comparison of synthetic and observed mag- b b 0 ⇥ h i 0 nitudes of CALSPEC spectro-photometric stan- for each broad band b, and where the color term is cho- dard stars for the old filters, and in reasonable agree- sen to be col = mg mi, and the average is taken over ment for the new filters. The estimates based on the the SNLS deep field− values of the color term. The av- tertiary standards are shown in the sixth column of ta- erage color term is chosen so that for a star of aver- ble I below, and the corresponding estimates based on age color, a simple (grey) flat field correction is enough synthetic CALSPEC magnitudes are shown in the sev- to homogeneize its magnitude over the focal plane. Of enth column. Estimates for the old filters are based on course, for stars with very unusual colors, one should in the January 2015 run (14Bm06), while estimates for the principle use its color through equation 1 to make its new filters are based on the May 2015 run (15Am04). magnitude independent of focal plane position. In practice, δk 0.01, so that we chose, as was done previously in elixir,⇠ to compute the grid solutions according to the II. NEW MEGACAM BROAD-BAND FILTERS full equation 1, but to only apply δz(x), as a systematic correction to the twilight flat fields of each run, or more In 2014 new ugriz broad-band filters were acquired precisely: for Megacam, with transmission properties (both spec- 0.4δz(x) f(x)=f (x) 10− trally and spatially) superior to those of the former gen- twilight ⇥ eration. These filters have also slightly di↵erent central where f is the master twilight flat of each camera wavelengths, and therefore must be related to the SNLS twilight run. This grid correction, defined on large super pixels photometric system that relied on the old ugriz filters. (4x9 per ccd for δz, 2x3 per ccd for δk), corrects for These filters are also spatially larger, allowing to use plate scale variations, as well as scattered light within four additional CCDs, thus bringing the total number the camera optics that results in a non-uniform illu- of chips in the focal plane to 40. mination of the detector mosaic. It consists therefore For all these reasons (di↵erent spectral properties, ad- mostly in a smooth, radial pattern, but also has chip- ditional chips) these filters needed a complete photo- to-chip variations due to spectral variations in quantum metric characterisation, expressed in terms of AB mag- efficiency of the ccds (most important in u band). These nitude zero points, photometric grid (aka “superflat”) chip-to-chip variations are mostly a color-dependent ef- corrections to the twilight flats, and color corrections to fect, induced by the fact that the mean color of the deep relate them to the SNLS photometric system. field stars is noticeably di↵erent from the twilight illu- mination color.

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