Re: New MegaCam Elixir ZPs collection

From: Ray Carlberg <carlberg_at_astro.utoronto.ca>
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:49:31 -0500
Anchoring to SDSS is crucial. As Nicolas and others can explain, the Landolt system is not all that well defined in terms of a flux calibration. It is the single largest systematic error in SNLS. This means that it will be abandoned as better systems come along--in particular SDSS.

Amazingly the SAC seems to view the MAPC program  to do this calibration as a waste of engineering time. We need a coherent explanation of this to gain SAC support.



Jean-Charles Cuillandre wrote:
 Hi Chris,

FYI, Chris had provided this plot at the time we were starting
to worry about the decrease of ZPs (turned out to be the optics
contamination). You will see the similar trend for r', i' and z'
and a slightly different shape for g' while u* is quite different 
in 03B (interestingly this correlates the Elixir ZPs derived then).

That plot along with mine prompted me to anchor r, i and z ZPs to 
the average behavior of r&i. And since u* was so poorly calibrated, 
I opted to anchor its run to run behavior to g' - sounds reasonable 
to you? Matching to Sloan ought to bring some answers soon!

					Jean-Charles.

  
 Hi,

Here's a short summary of the "Q97" analysis: the Smith et al. SDSS
standards located in the Landolt fields gathered from early 2003 up
to today. Even though we are working on using tertiary standards from
the Deep fields, for timing reasons and values of comparison for 
gradual evolutions in the processing chain, it was decided to stick 
to the Smith et al. standards for T0005. This new analysis of Q97 
consists of 7000 standards exposures!

The new Elixir flats for the analysis are called "B4". Previous
generations that have been distributed at CADC since 2003 are B1,
B2, and B3 - corresponding to various iterations of the photometric
grids as we were attempting to address the photometric flatness 
issues. The B4 version is the dual-color derived grid by Nicolas 
Regnault for SNLS. We adopted 4 grids for the lifetime of the camera, 
matching the time when an instrument change caused a significant change on 
the illumination pattern of the camera (grids are typically captured
after any instrument evolution, and sometimes we see no change, such
as the light baffle which oddly enough did not have any impact).

	Grid		Range (Runs)		Event
	---------------------------------------------------------
	03B		03Am01 -> 04Bm04	Initial setup
	04B		04Bm05 -> 05Am06	L3 lens flip
	05B		05Am07 -> 06Am03	Lift of WFC	
	06B		06Am04 -> 06Bm05	WFC contamination
	05B		06Bm06 -> present	WFC cleaning

For matching the dates or QSO runs, please consult the following page:
http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/Instruments/Imaging/MegaPrime/megaprimeschedule.html

The situation with T0004 is that it had a mix of data generated with
flats of various generations (B1/2/3). The idea for T0005 is that all
LS data are processed following the exact same recipe for the photometric 
grid for all epochs.

The first plot (ZPoffsets_Data.B3.png) presents the old collection
of zero points from Elixir. I plotted various known events that did 
have an impact (optics cleaning, mirror coating) and some less (mirror
washing). There are many more jumps visible, and we can see the u* 
calibration is poor (a result mainly of Elixir getting lost on attempting
an astrometry solution on single CCDs with only 2 stars visible on those
defocused 2sec exposures, not so surprising).

The second plot shows the same study, this time using the new collection
of flat fields (ZPoffsets_Data.B4.png). There are still many jumps but
the overall envelope has shrunk in amplitude and g' tends to be more 
decoupled that riz. Also the strange increase of zero point detected on 
in 03B/04A on the old processing is almost gone (we had no explanation 
for that one at the time). The u* band is still rather dreadful, but at 
least more balanced (Terapix had reported serious issues indeed with the 
B3 version in 06A pointing to an analysis issue by Elixir).

All things considered, the final set of zero points was set from 
deriving the median value over the whole time period for each filter
(which match to a great precision the ZPs of 05Bm05 - so I anchored
all data set on that run which had a ton of Q97 observations, stats
are great on that run). I then measured the offset to that median
value for the g, r, and i, applied the g offset to the u band, and
applied the average of the offset of r and i to r, i, and z. The idea
here is to reject some noise (based on the previous plot, you can see
indeed that riz behave pretty much the same, while g is quite off, hence
it was better not to mix everything). I recreated the whole photometric 
Elixir database and plotted again the offsets to the 05Bm05 ZPs, and 
this is the third plot attached (ZPoffsets_Data.B4.OffsetTo05B_Final.png).
As you can see, u and g are on top of each other (u invisible) and same
for r, i and z. Looking at this plot, I wonder if I was given the correct
dates for the mirror washing - they all seem to correlate by one run offset...
Note that the signature of the calendar of B4 grids provided above is not 
detectable on this data set: it is a good sign that photometric continuity 
is ensured throughout the life of the camera despite instrument/recipe
changes.

The last plot is simply the absolute value of all 5 ZPs plotted 
together, with again the ug and riz having the same behavior from 
run to run (ZP_Data.B4.png).

The global CFHTLS reprocessing we are about to start will make use of 
these zero points. Terapix will conduct a general photometric analysis
and we'll see how much better we are over T004 for fields that overlap
with Sloan patches.

The future sits within the four Deep fields: the next top priorities for
Elixir (for T0006) is to integrate their hundreds of stars as tertiary 
standards (and recalibrate all MegaCam data since 2003). Since last summer, 
the Q97 program includes medium exposures (~2mn) on Deep fields. Even when 
SNLS is over, we'll keep going back to these fields over the next years:
they will be the reference field for the lifetime of the camera. And now 
that flats are (presumed) final, a focus on the defringing recipe is needed 
as well.

Time to release the data and confront them to some analysis, please let
me know if you have any comment/ideas on this!

Thank you so much to Nicolas Regnault for his contribution on this effort!

						Jean-Charles.

ps: for the record, Elixir photometric equations for megacam are matched 
    to the SNLS ones:
 		u* = uSDSS - 0.214 * (u-g)SDSS
 		g' = gSDSS - 0.156 * (g-r)SDSS
 		r' = rSDSS - 0.000 * (g-r)SDSS
 		i' = iSDSS - 0.094 * (r-i)SDSS
 		z' = zSDSS + 0.050 * (i-z)SDSS           
    





  

Received on Thu Feb 14 2008 - 15:47:21 HST

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