TY - JOUR
T1 - A two-color CCD survey of the North Celestial Cap
T2 - I. The method
AU - Gorbikov, Evgeny
AU - Brosch, Noah
AU - Afonso, Cristina
N1 - Funding Information:
The NCCS catalogue of point and extended objects supports the TAUVEX project. The TAUVEX space telescope array, constructed by ElOp (Electro-Optic Industries Ltd.), a division of ELBIT Systems, for Tel Aviv University with funding from the Israel Space Agency (Ministry of Science, Culture, and Sport), consists of a bore-sighted assembly of three 20-cm telescopes imaging in the vacuum UV the same ∼one-degree field of view from geosynchronous orbit. Satellites in such orbits and, in particular, those used for telecommunications, are normally not used for astronomy, since they do not point-and-track celestial objects. To allow for the observation of various objects in the sky TAU-VEX is mounted on the side of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) GSAT-4 satellite on a Mounting Deck Plate (MDP) that can aim the TAUVEX line of sight (LOS) to different declinations, from δ = +90◦ to δ = −90◦. As GSAT-4 orbits the Earth on its geo-synchronous orbit, the TAUVEX LOS scans a sky ribbon. The data transmitted to the ground station are reconstructed into a set of UV images of the sky ribbon scanned by the experiment.
Funding Information:
Acknowledgements LAIWO has been built at the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany with the financial support from MPIA, and grants from the German-Israel Foundation and from the Israel Science Foundation as a scientific collaboration between Tel Aviv University and MPIA. We are grateful to our German colleagues for constructing this instrument and to Dr. Shai Kaspi, the LAIWO liaison scientist at Tel Aviv University. We acknowledge the considerable technical help tended by the Wise Observatory staff, Mr. Ezra Mashal and Mr. Sammy Ben Guigui, and MPIA Heidelberg, Dr. Karl-Heinz Marien, the project manager, Mr. Ralf Klein, Mr. Florian Briegel, and Mr. Harald Baumeister.
Funding Information:
Funding for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, the Japanese Mon-bukagakusho, and the Max Planck Society. The SDSS Web site is http://www.sdss.org/.
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - We describe technical aspects of an astrometric and photometric survey of the North Celestial Cap (NCC), from the Pole (δ=90°) to δ=80°, in support of the TAUVEX mission. This region, at galactic latitudes from ~17° to ~37°, has poor coverage in modern CCD-based surveys. The observations are performed with the Wise Observatory one-meter reflector and with a new mosaic CCD camera (LAIWO) that images in the Johnson-Cousins R and I bands a one-square-degree field with sub-arcsec pixels. The images are treated using IRAF and SExtractor to produce a final catalogue of sources. The astrometry, based on the USNO-A2. 0 catalogue, is good to ~1 arcsec and the photometry is good to ~0.1 mag for point sources brighter than R=20.0 or I=19.1 mag. The limiting magnitudes of the survey, defined at photometric errors smaller than 0.15 mag, are 20.6 mag (R) and 19.6 (I). We separate stars from non-stellar objects based on the object shapes in the R and I bands, attempting to reproduce the SDSS star/galaxy dichotomy. The completeness test indicates that the catalogue is complete to the limiting magnitudes.
AB - We describe technical aspects of an astrometric and photometric survey of the North Celestial Cap (NCC), from the Pole (δ=90°) to δ=80°, in support of the TAUVEX mission. This region, at galactic latitudes from ~17° to ~37°, has poor coverage in modern CCD-based surveys. The observations are performed with the Wise Observatory one-meter reflector and with a new mosaic CCD camera (LAIWO) that images in the Johnson-Cousins R and I bands a one-square-degree field with sub-arcsec pixels. The images are treated using IRAF and SExtractor to produce a final catalogue of sources. The astrometry, based on the USNO-A2. 0 catalogue, is good to ~1 arcsec and the photometry is good to ~0.1 mag for point sources brighter than R=20.0 or I=19.1 mag. The limiting magnitudes of the survey, defined at photometric errors smaller than 0.15 mag, are 20.6 mag (R) and 19.6 (I). We separate stars from non-stellar objects based on the object shapes in the R and I bands, attempting to reproduce the SDSS star/galaxy dichotomy. The completeness test indicates that the catalogue is complete to the limiting magnitudes.
KW - Astrometry
KW - Instrumentation
KW - North Celestial Pole
KW - Photometry
KW - Survey
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77950339098&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10509-009-0242-0
DO - 10.1007/s10509-009-0242-0
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AN - SCOPUS:77950339098
SN - 0004-640X
VL - 326
SP - 203
EP - 217
JO - Astrophysics and Space Science
JF - Astrophysics and Space Science
IS - 2
ER -