The calibration of ground based optical imaging data to photometric accuracy of 10 mmag over the full survey area and to color uniformity better than 5 mmag on the scale of the VIS focal plane is a key science requirement for the Euclid mission. These accuracies enable stable photometric redshifts of galaxies and modeling of the color dependent VIS PSF for weak lensing studies. We use the Gaia photometry to calibrate the $g/r/i/z$ magnitudes of Dark Energy Survey (DES) data to meet the stringent Euclid requirements. The Gaia G band magnitude along with the BP-RP color information of stars observed in the DES single epoch (SE) exposures are used to derive the transformation from Gaia to DES photometry for individual CCDs and to characterize persistent photometric errors across the DECam focal plane. We use the color dependence of these persistent errors to characterize the $g/r/i/z$ bandpass variations across the DECam focal plane.
The Gaia mission is described, along with its scientific potential and its updated science perfomances. Although it is often described as a self-calibrated mission, Gaia still needs to tie part of its measurements to external scales (or to convert them in physical units). A detailed decription of the Gaia spectrophotometric standard stars survey is provided, along with a short description of the Gaia calibration model. The model requires a grid of approximately 200 stars, calibrated to a few percent with respect to Vega, and covering different spectral types.
The Gaia mission is described, focussing on those technical aspects that are necessary to understand the details of its external (absolute) flux calibration. On board of Gaia there will be two (spectro)photometers, the blue one (BP) and the red one (RP) covering the range 330-1050 nm, and the white light (G-band) imager dedicated to astrometry. Given the fact that the focal plane of Gaia will be constituted by 105 CCDs and the sources will cross the the focal plane at constant speed, at different positions in each of the foreseen passages (on average 70--80, but up to 350) in the mission lifet…
The Gaia-ESO Survey is a wide field spectroscopic survey recently started with the FLAMES@VLT in Cerro Paranal, Chile. It will produce radial velocities more accurate than Gaia's for faint stars (down to V~18), and astrophysical parameters and abundances for approximately 100000 stars, belonging to all Galactic populations. 300 nights were assigned in 5 years (with the last year subject to approval after a detailed report). In particular, to connect with other ongoing and planned spectroscopic surveys, a detailed calibration program --- for the astrophysical parameters derivation --- is planne…
Although a catalogue of synthetic RGB magnitudes, providing photometric data for a sample of 1346 bright stars, has been recently published, its usefulness is still limited due to the small number of reference stars available, considering that they are distributed throughout the whole celestial sphere, and the fact that they are restricted to Johnson V < 6.6 mag. This work presents synthetic RGB magnitudes for ~15 million stars brighter than Gaia G = 18 mag, making use of a calibration between the RGB magnitudes of the reference bright star sample and the corresponding high quality photometric…
We extend the SDSS Stripe 82 Standard Stars Catalog with post-2007 SDSS imaging data. This improved version lists averaged SDSS ugriz photometry for nearly a million stars brighter than r~22 mag. With 2-3x more measurements per star, random errors are 1.4-1.7x smaller than in the original catalog, and about 3x smaller than for individual SDSS runs. Random errors in the new catalog are ~< 0.01 mag for stars brighter than 20.0, 21.0, 21.0, 20.5, and 19.0 mag in u, g, r, i, and z-bands, respectively. We achieve this error threshold by using the Gaia Early Data Release 3 (EDR3) Gmag photometry to …
Gaia measures the five astrometric parameters for stars in the Milky Way, but only four of them (positions and proper motion, but not parallax) are well measured beyond a few kpc from the Sun. Modern spectroscopic surveys such as APOGEE cover a large area of the Milky Way disk and we can use the relation between spectra and luminosity to determine distances to stars beyond Gaia's parallax reach. Here, we design a deep neural network trained on stars in common between Gaia and APOGEE that determines spectro-photometric distances to APOGEE stars, while including a flexible model to calibrate par…
In order to accurately determine stellar properties, knowledge of the effective temperature of stars is vital. We implement Gaia and 2MASS photometry in the InfraRed Flux Method and apply it to over 360,000 stars across different evolutionary stages in the GALAH DR3 survey. We derive colour-effective temperature relations that take into account the effect of metallicity and surface gravity over the range 4000 to 8000 kelvin, from very metal-poor stars to super solar metallicities. The internal uncertainty of these calibrations is of order 40-80 kelvin depending on the colour combination used. …
In this study, photometric metallicity and absolute magnitude calibrations were derived using F-G spectral type main-sequence stars in the Solar neighbourhood with precise spectroscopic, photometric and Gaia astrometric data for UBV photometry. The sample consists of 504 main-sequence stars covering the temperature, surface gravity and colour index intervals $5300<T_{eff} < 7300$ K, $\log g > 4$ (cgs) and $0.3<(B-V)_0<0.8$ mag, respectively. Stars with relative trigonometric parallax errors $σ_π/π\leq0.01$ were preferred from Gaia DR2 data for the estimation of their $M_V$ absolute magnitudes.…
Gaia Data Release 1 allows to recalibrate standard candles such as the Red Clump stars. To use those, they first need to be accurately characterised. In particular, colours are needed to derive the interstellar extinction. As no filter is available for the first Gaia data release and to avoid the atmosphere model mismatch, an empirical calibration is unavoidable. The purpose of this work is to provide the first complete and robust photometric empirical calibration of the Gaia Red Clump stars of the solar neighbourhood, through colour-colour, effective temperature-colour and absolute magnitude-…
Context. On September 2016 the first data from Gaia were released (DR1). The first release included photometry for over 10^9 sources in the very broad G system. Aims. To test the correspondence between G magnitudes in DR1 and the synthetic equivalents derived using spectral energy distributions from observed and model spectrophotometry. To correct the G passband curve and to measure the zero point in the Vega system. Methods. I have computed the synthetic G and Tycho-2 BV photometry for a sample of stars using the Next Generation Spectral Library (NGSL) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) CAL…
A probabilistic approach has been used in combination with the parallax data from Gaia (e)DR3 to calibrate Period-Luminosity-(Abundance) (PLZ) Relations covering a wide range of visual to Infrared observations of RR Lyrae stars. Absolute Magnitude Relations are given, derived from the same selection of stars, for $V$, $G$, $I$, $K_\mathrm{s}$ and WISE $W1$ as well as for for the reddening free pseudo-magnitudes $WBV$, $WVI$ and finally also Gaia $WG$. The classical relation between $M_V$ and [Fe/H] is redetermined and as an illustration distances are given to a few selected objects.
Empirical and theoretical studies have demonstrated that the periods of Mira variable stars are related to their ages. This, together with their brightness in the infrared, makes them powerful probes of the formation and evolution of highly-extincted or distant parts of the Local Group. Here we utilise the Gaia DR3 catalogue of long-period variable candidates to calibrate the period-age relation of the Mira variables. Dynamical models are fitted to the O-rich Mira variable population across the extended solar neighbourhood and then the resulting solar neighbourhood period-kinematic relations a…
The recently-developed J-region Asymptotic Giant Branch (JAGB) method has extraordinary potential as an extragalactic standard candle, capable of calibrating the absolute magnitudes of locally-accessible Type Ia supernovae, thereby leading to an independent determination of the Hubble constant. Using Gaia Early Data Release 3 (EDR3) parallaxes, we calibrate the zeropoint of the JAGB method, based on the mean luminosity of a color-selected subset of carbon-rich AGB stars. We identify Galactic carbon stars from the literature and use their near-infrared photometry and Gaia EDR3 parallaxes to mea…
A Two-level Radial-velocity Zero-point Calibration for LAMOST MRS with Gaia and APOGEE and a Value-added RV Catalogue
Institute for Frontiers in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学前沿天文与天体物理研究所）；School of Physics and Astronomy, Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学物理与天文学院）
We present the photometric calibration of the twelve optical passbands for the Javalambre Photometric Local Universe Survey (J-PLUS) third data release (DR3), comprising 1642 pointings of two square degrees each. We selected nearly 1.5 million main sequence stars with a signal-to-noise ratio larger than ten in the twelve J-PLUS passbands and available low-resolution (R = 20-80) spectrum from the blue and red photometers (BP/RP) in Gaia DR3. We compared the synthetic photometry from BP/RP spectra with the J-PLUS instrumental magnitudes, after correcting for the magnitude and color terms between…
As one of the best ground-based photometric dataset, Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) has been widely used as the reference to calibrate other surveys. In this work, we present an independent validation and re-calibration of the PS1 photometry using spectroscopic data from the LAMOST DR7 and photometric data from the corrected Gaia EDR3 with the Stellar Color Regression (SCR) method. Using per band typically a total of 1.5 million LAMOST-PS1-Gaia stars as standards, we show that the PS1 photometric calibration precisions in the $grizy$ filters are around $4\sim 5$ mmag when averaged over $20'$ regions. Howev…
Using parallaxes from Gaia Early Data Release 3 (EDR3), we determine multi-wavelength BVI, JHK, and [3.6] & [4.5] micron absolute magnitudes for 37 nearby Milky Way Cepheids, covering the period range between 5 and 60 days. We apply these period-luminosity relations to Cepheids in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and find that the derived distances are significantly discrepant with the geometric distances according to detached eclipsing binaries (DEBs). We explore several potential causes of these issues, including reddening, metallicity, and the existence of an additional zero-point off…
Hipparcos, the first ever experiment of global astrometry, was launched by ESA in 1989 and its results published in 1997 (Perryman et al., Astron. Astrophys. 323, L49, 1997; Perryman & ESA (eds), The Hipparcos and Tycho catalogues, ESA SP-1200, 1997). A new reduction was later performed using an improved satellite attitude reconstruction leading to an improved accuracy for stars brighter than 9th magnitude (van Leeuwen & Fantino, Astron. Astrophys. 439, 791, 2005; van Leeuwen, Astron. Astrophys. 474, 653, 2007). The Hipparcos Catalogue provided an extended dataset of very accurate astrometric …
The Gaia-ESO survey (GES) is now in its fifth and last year of observations, and has already produced tens of thousands of high-quality spectra of stars in all Milky Way components. This paper presents the strategy behind the selection of astrophysical calibration targets, ensuring that all GES results on radial velocities, atmospheric parameters, and chemical abundance ratios will be both internally consistent and easily comparable with other literature results, especially from other large spectroscopic surveys and from Gaia. The calibration of GES is particularly delicate because of: (i) the…
The present work aims to build a new statistical distance scale for planetary nebulae (PNe) based on a rigorous calibration sample. The distances of the calibration sample are derived from the trigonometric parallax method using the recent measurements of Gaia early third data release (Gaia EDR3). The new distance scale is created by applying the well-known linear relationship between the radio surface brightness temperature and the nebular radius. The calibration sample is made up of 96 PNe of accurately computed distances with uncertainties less than $20\%$. Earlier ground- and space-based t…
RR Lyrae stars have long been popular standard candles, but significant advances in methodology and technology have been made in recent years to increase their precision as distance indicators. We present multi-wavelength (optical $UBVR_cI_c$ and Gaia $G, BP, RP$; near-infrared $JHK_s$; mid-infrared $[3.6], [4.5]$) period-luminosity-metallicity (PLZ), period-Wesenheit-metallicity (PWZ) relations, calibrated using photometry obtained from The Carnegie RR Lyrae Program and parallaxes from the Gaia second data release for 55 Galactic field RR Lyrae stars. The metallicity slope, which has long bee…
The calibration of the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) in the $I$-band has a direct role in determinations of the Hubble constant, a subject of recent interest due to the discrepancy between direct and indirect estimates of its value. We present a maximum likelihood (ML) method designed to obtain an independent calibration of the brightness of TRGB using $Gaia$ parallaxes from the Early Data Release 3 (EDR3) of Milky Way field Giants at high Galactic latitude. We adopt simple parameterizations for the Milky Way stellar luminosity function and density law and and optimize the likelihood of t…
The Radial Velocity Spectrometer (RVS) on board of Gaia will perform a large spectroscopic survey to determine the radial velocities of some 1.5x10^8 stars. We present the status of ground-based observations of a sample of 1420 candidate standard stars designed to calibrate the RVS. Each candidate star has to be observed several times before Gaia launch (and at least once during the mission) to ensure that its radial velocity remains stable during the whole mission. Observations are performed with the high-resolution spectrographs SOPHIE, NARVAL and CORALIE, completed with archival data of the…
Indications from Gaia data release 2 (DR2) are that the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB, a population II standard candle related to the helium flash in low mass stars) is close to -4 in absolute I magnitude in the Cousins photometric system. Our sample is high latitude southern stars from the thick disk and inner halo, and our result is consistent with longstanding findings from globular clusters, whose distances were calibrated with RR Lyrae stars. As the Gaia mission proceeds, there is every reason to think an accurate Galactic geometric calibration of TRGB will be a significant outcome.
We describe the methodologies that, taking advantage of Gaia-DR1 and the Gaia-ESO Survey data, enable the comparison of observed open star cluster sequences with stellar evolutionary models. The final, long-term goal is the exploitation of open clusters as age calibrators. We perform a homogeneous analysis of eight open clusters using the Gaia-DR1 TGAS catalogue for bright members, and information from the Gaia-ESO Survey for fainter stars. Cluster membership probabilities for the Gaia-ESO Survey targets are derived based on several spectroscopic tracers. The Gaia-ESO Survey also provides the …
We have conducted a search for open clusters in the vicinity of classical Galactic Cepheids based on high-quality astrometry from the third data release (DR3) of the ESA mission Gaia to improve the calibration of the Leavitt law (LL). Our approach requires no prior knowledge of existing clusters, allowing us to both detect new host clusters and cross-check previously reported associations. Our Gold sample consists of 34 Cepheids residing in 28 open clusters, including 27 fundamental mode and 7 overtone Cepheids. Three new bona fide cluster Cepheids are reported (V0378 Cen, ST Tau, and GH Lup) …
By combining spectroscopic data from the LAMOST DR7, SDSS DR12, and corrected photometric data from the Gaia EDR3, we apply the Stellar Color Regression (SCR; Yuan et al. 2015a) method to recalibrate the SDSS Stripe 82 standard stars catalog of Ivezić et al. (2007). With a total number of about 30,000 spectroscopically targeted stars, we have mapped out the relatively large and strongly correlated photometric zero-point errors present in the catalog, $\sim$2.5 per cent in the $u$ band and $\sim$ 1 per cent in the $griz$ bands. Our study also confirms some small but significant magnitude depend…
Gaia data and stellar surveys open the way to the construction of detailed 3D maps of the Galactic interstellar (IS) dust based on the synthesis of star distances and extinctions. Reliable extinction measurements require very accurate photometric calibrations. We show the first step of an iterative process linking 3D dust maps and photometric calibrations and improving them simultaneously. Our previous 3D map of nearby IS dust was used to select low reddening SDSS/APOGEE-DR14 red giants, and this database served for an empirical effective temperature- and metallicity-dependent photometric cali…
Forward-modelling Milky Way Cepheids: selection effects and physical priors in the Gaia-HST calibration
University of Oxford（牛津大学）；Space Telescope Science Institute（太空望远镜科学研究所）；Johns Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学）；University of Portsmouth（朴茨茅斯大学）；CNRS & Sorbonne Université（法国国家科学研究中心与索邦大学）；Duke University（杜克大学）
Context. An increasing number of high resolution stellar spectra is available today thanks to many past and ongoing spectroscopic surveys. Consequently, numerous methods have been developed in order to perform an automatic spectral analysis on a massive amount of data. When reviewing published results, biases arise and they need to be addressed and minimized. Aims. We are providing a homogeneous library with a common set of calibration stars (known as the Gaia FGK Benchmark Stars) that will allow to assess stellar analysis methods and calibrate spectroscopic surveys. Methods. High resolution a…
Distances to individual stars in our own Galaxy are critical in order to piece together the nature of its velocity and spatial structure. Core helium burning red clump (RC) stars have similar luminosities, are abundant throughout the Galaxy, and thus constitute good standard candles. We build a hierarchical probabilistic model to quantify the quality of RC stars as standard candles using parallax measurements from the first Gaia data release. A unique aspect of our methodology is to fully account for (and marginalize over) parallax, photometry, and dust corrections uncertainties, which leads t…
In this paper we gauge the potentiality of Gaia in the distance scale calibration of planetary nebulae (PNe) by assessing the impact of DR1 parallaxes of central stars of Galactic PNe (CSPNe) against known physical relations. For selected PNe targets with state-of-the-art data on angular sizes and fluxes, we derive the distance-dependent parameters of the classical distance scales, i.e., physical radii and ionized masses, from DR1 parallaxes; we propagate the uncertainties in the estimated quantities and evaluate their statistical properties in the presence of large relative parallax errors; w…
We present new near-infrared, $JHK_s$, Period--Luminosity relations (PLRs) for RR Lyrae variables in the Messier 53 (M53 or NGC 5024) globular cluster. Multi-epoch $JHK_s$ observations, obtained with the WIRCam instrument on the 3.6-m Canada France Hawaii Telescope, are used for the first time to estimate precise mean-magnitudes for 63 RR Lyrae stars in M53 including 29 fundamental-mode (RRab) and 34 first-overtone modes (RRc) variables. The $JHK_s$-band PLRs for RR Lyrae stars are best constrained for RRab types with a minimal scatter of 22, 23, and 19 mmag, respectively. The combined sample …
The red giant branch tip in the SDSS, PS1, JWST, NGRST and Euclid photometric systems. Calibration in optical passbands using Gaia DR3 synthetic photometry
Asteroseismic data can be used to determine surface gravities with precisions of < 0.05 dex by using the global seismic quantities Deltanu and nu_max along with Teff and [Fe/H]. Surface gravity is also one of the four stellar properties to be derived by automatic analyses for 1 billion stars from Gaia data (workpackage GSP_Phot). We explore seismic data from MS F, G, K stars (solar-like stars) observed by Kepler as a potential calibration source for methods that Gaia will use for object characterisation (log g). We calculate log g for bright nearby stars for which radii and masses are known, a…
We use data from the ESA Gaia mission Early Data Release 3 (EDR3) to measure the trigonometric parallax of $ω$ Cen, the first high precision parallax measurement for the most massive globular cluster in the Milky Way. We use a combination of positional and high quality proper motion data from EDR3 to identify over 100,000 cluster members, of which 67,000 are in the magnitude and color range where EDR3 parallaxes are best calibrated. We find the estimated parallax to be robust, demonstrating good control of systematics within the color-magnitude diagram of the cluster. We find a parallax for th…
Quasars are ideal targets to use for astrometric calibration of large scale astronomical surveys as they have negligible proper motion and parallax. The forthcoming 4-m International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) will survey the sky that covers a width of about 27 arcminute. To carry out astrometric calibration of the ILMT observations, we aimed to compile a list of quasars with accurate equatorial coordinates and falling in the ILMT stripe. Towards this, we cross-correlated all the quasars that are known till the present date with the sources in the Gaia-DR2 catalogue, as the Gaia-DR2 source…
The second Gaia data release (DR2) delivers accurate and homogeneous photometry data of the whole sky to an exquisite quality, reaching down to the unprecedented milli-magnitude (mmag) level for the G, GRP, and GBP passbands. However, the presence of magnitude-dependent systematic effects at the 10 mmag level limits its power in scientific exploitation. In this work, using about half-million stars in common with the LAMOST DR5, we apply the spectroscopy-based stellar color regression method to calibrate the Gaia G-GRP and GBP-GRP colors. With an unprecedented precision of about 1 mmag, systema…
Revising the Milky Way Cepheid Calibration: Quantifying and Correcting for Previously Undetected Distance Modulus Errors in the Gaia-based Multi-Wavelength Period-Luminosity Relations
The Observatories, Carnegie Institution for Science（卡内基科学研究所观测站）；Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Chicago（芝加哥大学天文学与天体物理系）；Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago（芝加哥大学卡弗里宇宙物理学研究所）
Calibration of the period-luminosity relation (PLR) for Cepheids has always been one of the biggest goals of stellar astronomy. Among a considerable number of different approaches, the Baade-Becker-Wesselink (BBW) method stands in the foreground as one of the most universal and precise methods. We present a new realization of the BBW method which is considered to be the generalization of surface brightness (\citealt{Barnes+Evans+1976}) and \cite{Balona+1977} approaches first proposed by \cite{Rastorguev+Dambis+2010} and described in \cite{Paper1}. One of the main features of this method is usi…
Aims. The Radial Velocity Spectrometer (RVS) on board the ESA satellite mission Gaia has no calibration device. Therefore, the radial velocity zero point needs to be calibrated with stars that are proved to be stable at a level of 300 m/s during the Gaia observations. Methods. We compiled a dataset of ~71000 radial velocity measurements from five high-resolution spectrographs. A catalogue of 4813 stars was built by combining these individual measurements. The zero point was established using asteroids. Results. The resulting catalogue has seven observations per star on average on a typical tim…
In this letter, we have carried out an independent validation of the Gaia EDR3 photometry using about 10,000 Landolt standard stars from Clem & Landolt (2013). Using a machine learning technique, the UBVRI magnitudes are converted into the Gaia magnitudes and colors and then compared to those in the EDR3, with the effect of metallicity incorporated. Our result confirms the significant improvements in the calibration process of the Gaia EDR3. Yet modest trends up to 10 mmag with G magnitude are found for all the magnitudes and colors for the 10 < G < 19 mag range, particularly for the bright an…
In this work, we use the spectroscopy-based stellar color regression (SCR) method with ~ 0.7 million common stars between LAMOST DR7 and Gaia EDR3 to acquire color corrections in G - GRP and GBP - GRP. A sub-mmag precision is achieved. Our results demonstrate that improvements in the calibration process of the EDR3 have removed the color term in GBP - GRP and eliminated the discontinuity caused by the changes of instrument configurations to a great extent. However, modest systematic trends with G magnitude are still detected. The corresponding color correction terms as a function of G are prov…
A 1% distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud measured by population-II pulsating stars using Gaia Data Release 3
Institute of Physics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)（洛桑联邦理工学院物理研究所）；Institut für Astrophysik und Geophysik, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen（哥廷根大学天体物理与地球物理研究所）
Photometric metallicity of Galactic RR Lyrae stars in the Gaia DR3 era
University of Delhi（德里大学）；Indian Institute of Astrophysics（印度天体物理研究所）；Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics（大学间天文与天体物理中心）；University of Petroleum and Energy Studies（石油与能源大学）
Distances from the Gaia mission will no doubt improve our understanding of stellar physics by providing an excellent constraint on the luminosity of the star. However, it is also clear that high precision stellar properties from, for example, asteroseismology, will also provide a needed input constraint in order to calibrate the methods that Gaia will use, e.g. stellar models or GSP_phot. For solar-like stars (F, G, K IV/V), asteroseismic data delivers at the least two very important quantities: (1) the average large frequency separation <Delta_nu> and (2) the frequency corresponding to the ma…
We improve the identification and isolation of individual stellar populations in the Galactic halo based on an updated set of empirically calibrated stellar isochrones in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) photometric systems. Along the Galactic prime meridian ($l=0^{\circ}$ and $180^{\circ}$), where proper motions and parallaxes from Gaia DR2 can be used to compute rotational velocities of stars in the rest frame of the Milky Way, we use the observed double color-magnitude sequences of stars having large transverse motions, which are attributed to groups of stars in th…
