A&A 471, 1077–1089 (2007) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20066843 & c ESO 2007 Astrophysics Astrometry with Carte du Ciel plates, San Fernando zone I. Digitization and measurement using a flatbed scanner B. Vicente1,2,C.Abad2, and F. Garzón1,3 1 Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), La Laguna (S/C de Tenerife) 38200, Spain e-mail:
[email protected] 2 Centro de Investigaciones de Astronomía (CIDA), Apdo. 264, Mérida, 3101-A, Venezuela 3 Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna (S/C de Tenerife) 38200, Spain Received 29 November 2006 / Accepted 16 May 2007 ABSTRACT Context. The historic plates of the Carte du Ciel, an international cooperative project launched in 1887, offers valuable first-epoch material for determining of absolute proper motions. Aims. We present an original method of digitizing and astrometrically reducing Carte du Ciel plate material using an inexpensive flatbed scanner, to demonstrate that for this material there is an alternative to more specialized measuring machines that are very few in number and thus not readily available. The sample of plates chosen to develop this method are original Carte du Ciel plates of the San Fernando zone, photographic material with a mean epoch 1903.6, and a limiting photographic magnitude ∼14.5, covering the declination range of −10◦ ≤ δ ≤−2◦. Methods. Digitization has been made using a commercial flatbed scanner, demonstrating the internal precision that can be attained with such a device. A variety of post-scan corrections are shown to be necessary. In particular, the large distortion introduced by the non-uniform action of the scanner is modelled using multiple scans of each plate.