All-Sky Faint DA White Dwarf Spectrophotometric Standards for Astrophysical Observatories: The Complete Sample
arXiv:2305.07563 · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/acd333
Abstract
Hot DA white dwarfs have fully radiative pure hydrogen atmospheres that are the least complicated to model. Pulsationally stable, they are fully characterized by their effective temperature Teff, and surface gravity log g, which can be deduced from their optical spectra and used in model atmospheres to predict their spectral energy distribution (SED). Based on this, three bright DAWDs have defined the spectrophotometric flux scale of the CALSPEC system of HST. In this paper we add 32 new fainter (16.5 < V < 19.5) DAWDs spread over the whole sky and within the dynamic range of large telescopes. Using ground based spectra and panchromatic photometry with HST/WFC3, a new hierarchical analysis process demonstrates consistency between model and observed fluxes above the terrestrial atmosphere to < 0.004 mag rms from 2700 Å to 7750 Å and to 0.008 mag rms at 1.6μm for the total set of 35 DAWDs. These DAWDs are thus established as spectrophotometric standards with unprecedented accuracy from the near ultraviolet to the near-infrared, suitable for both ground and space based observatories. They are embedded in existing surveys like SDSS, PanSTARRS and GAIA, and will be naturally included in the LSST survey by Rubin Observatory. With additional data and analysis to extend the validity of their SEDs further into the IR, these spectrophotometric standard stars could be used for JWST, as well as for the Roman and Euclid observatories.
arXiv commentAccepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal. Corrected error in Table 10 and associated Fig 7 in which RP and BP values for the 3 CALSPEC standards had been transposed
References in corpus (20)
- emcee: The MCMC Hammer
- The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
- Gaia Data Release 3: Summary of the content and survey properties
- The Pan-STARRS1 Database and Data Products
- A Catalog of Spectroscopically Confirmed White Dwarfs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4
- A catalogue of white dwarfs in Gaia EDR3
- The Dark Energy Survey Data Release 2
- A Catalog of Spectroscopically Identified White Dwarf Stars in the First Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
- Techniques and Review of Absolute Flux Calibration from the Ultraviolet to the Mid-Infrared
- Improved Photometric Calibration of the SNLS and the SDSS Supernova Surveys
- New Grids of Pure-Hydrogen White-Dwarf NLTE Model Atmospheres \newline and the HST/STIS Flux Calibration
- The ESO supernovae type Ia progenitor survey (SPY)
- Sub-percent Photometry: Faint DA White Dwarf Spectophotometric Standards for Astrophysical Observatories
- Multi-band photometry and spectroscopy of an all-sky sample of bright white dwarfs
- New Photometric Calibration of the Wide Field Camera 3 Detectors
- A search for white dwarfs in the Galactic plane: the field and the open cluster population
- Towards a Network of Faint DA White Dwarfs as High-Precision Spectrophotometric Standards
- A catalogue of white dwarf candidates in VST ATLAS
- Photometry and spectroscopy of faint candidate spectrophotometric standard DA white dwarfs
- Perfecting our set of spectrophotometric standard DA white dwarfs