A two-color CCD survey of the North Celestial Cap: I. The method

Evgeny Gorbikov*, Noah Brosch, Cristina Afonso

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)203-217
Number of pages15
JournalAstrophysics and Space Science
Volume326
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2010

Funding

FundersFunder number
Electro-Optic Industries Ltd.
German-Israel Foundation
Israel Space Agency
MPIA
Ministry of Science, Culture, and Sport
Sloan Digital Sky Survey
National Science Foundation
U.S. Department of Energy
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Israel Science Foundation
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Tel Aviv University

    Keywords

    • Astrometry
    • Instrumentation
    • North Celestial Pole
    • Photometry
    • Survey

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