Solving the global photometric self-calibration problem in LSST
2010
We present an innovative method for photometric calibration of massive survey data that will be applied to the
Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system designed to obtain
imaging data in six broad photometric bands (ugrizy, 320-1050 nm). Each sky position will be observed multiple
times, with about a hundred or more observations per band collected over the main survey area (20,000 sq.deg.)
during the anticipated 10 years of operations. Photometric zeropoints are required to be stable in time to 0.5%
(rms), and uniform across the survey area to better than 1% (rms). The large number of measurements of
each object taken during the survey allows identification of isolated non-variable sources, and forms the basis
for LSST's global self-calibration method. Inspired by SDSS's uber-calibration procedure, the self-calibration
determines zeropoints by requiring that repeated measurements of non-variable stars must be self-consistent when
corrected for variations in atmospheric and instrumental bandpass shapes. This requirement constrains both the
instrument throughput and atmospheric extinction. The atmospheric and instrumental bandpass shapes will
be explicitly measured using auxiliary instrumentation. We describe the algorithm used, with special emphasis
both on the challenges of controlling systematic errors, and how such an approach interacts with the design of
the survey, and discuss ongoing simulations of its performance.
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