Astrometric and Photometric Accuracy of the 1.3 m Robotically Controlled Telescope on Kitt Peak
Abstract
The 1.3 m (50 inch) telescope on Kitt Peak has been refurbished and provided with an autonomous scheduler. It is operated by The Robotically Controlled Telescope (RCT) consortium whose members are: South Carolina State, Villanova and Western Kentucky Universities. The facility possesses 5 board (UBVRI) and 11 narrow-band filters. Attached to the RCT camera is a 2048 x 2048 SITe SI-424A back-illuminated CCD with 24 micrometer pixels. We used over 7,000 star measurements from 37, 198s R-images to compute the astrometric and photometric accuracy. The difference of the J2000 coordinates computed from the RCT images and the J2000 Nomad catalog coordinate values in right ascension peaks at 0.058”, while the declination peaks at -0.125”. We obtained these astrometric results using the simplest assumptions: linear relationship between standard coordinates and measured coordinates, no color or magnitude dependency and no differential refraction (all images taken in the zenith). We express the photometric accuracy in the following manner: The Signal-to-Noise-Ratio as a function of apparent magnitude shows that the RCT is not noise dominated at m < 20 magnitude.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #223
- Pub Date:
- January 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014AAS...22314826M