Context.
The full third
Gaia
data release will provide, for the first time, the calibrated spectra obtained with the blue and red
Gaia
slitless spectrophotometers (BP and RP, respectively).
Gaia
is a ...very complex mission and cannot be considered as a single instrument, but rather as many instruments. The two lines of sight with wide fields of view introduce strong variations of the observations across the large focal plane with more than one hundred different detectors. The main challenge when facing
Gaia
spectral calibration is that no lamp spectra or flat fields are available during the mission. Also, the significant size of the line spread function with respect to the dispersion of the prisms produces alien photons contaminating neighbouring positions of the spectra. This makes the calibration special and different from standard approaches.
Aims.
This work gives a detailed description of the internal calibration model for the spectrophotometric data used to obtain the content of the
Gaia
catalogue. The main purpose of the internal calibration is to bring all the epoch spectra onto a common flux and pixel (pseudo-wavelength) scale, taking into account variations over the focal plane and with time, producing a mean spectrum from all the observations of the same source.
Methods.
In order to describe all observations on a common mean flux and pseudo-wavelength scale, we constructed a suitable representation of the internally calibrated mean spectra via basis functions, and we described the transformation between non-calibrated epoch spectra and calibrated mean spectra via a discrete convolution, parametrising the convolution kernel to recover the relevant coefficients.
Results.
The model proposed here for the internal calibration of the
Gaia
spectrophotometric observations is able to combine all observations into a mean instrument to allow the comparison of different sources and observations obtained with different instrumental conditions along the mission and the generation of mean spectra from a number of observations of the same source. We derived a calibration model that can handle the self-calibrating nature of the problem. The output of this model provides the internal mean spectra, not as a sampled function (flux and wavelength), but as a linear combination of basis functions, although sampled spectra can easily be derived from them.
Gaia Data Release 1 Carrasco, J M; Evans, D W; Montegriffo, P ...
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin),
11/2016, Volume:
595
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Context. Gaia is an ESA cornerstone mission launched on 19 December 2013 aiming to obtain the most complete and precise 3D map of our Galaxy by observing more than one billion sources. This paper is ...part of a series of documents explaining the data processing and its results for Gaia Data Release 1, focussing on the G band photometry. Aims. This paper describes the calibration model of the Gaia photometric passband for Gaia Data Release 1. Methods. The overall principle of splitting the process into internal and external calibrations is outlined. In the internal calibration, a self-consistent photometric system is generated. Then, the external calibration provides the link to the absolute photometric flux scales. Results. The Gaia photometric calibration pipeline explained here was applied to the first data release with good results. Details are given of the various calibration elements including the mathematical formulation of the models used and of the extraction and preparation of the required input parameters (e.g. colour terms). The external calibration in this first release provides the absolute zero point and photometric transformations from the GaiaG passband to other common photometric systems. Conclusions. This paper describes the photometric calibration implemented for the first Gaia data release and the instrumental effects taken into account. For this first release no aperture losses, radiation damage, and other second-order effects have not yet been implemented in the calibration.
Gaia Data Release 1 Evans, D W; Riello, M; De Angeli, F ...
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin),
4/2017, Volume:
600
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Aims. The photometric validation of the Gaia DR1 release of the ESA Gaia mission is described and the quality of the data shown. Methods. This is carried out via an internal analysis of the ...photometry using the most constant sources. Comparisons with external photometric catalogues are also made, but are limited by the accuracies and systematics present in these catalogues. An analysis of the quoted errors is also described. Investigations of the calibration coefficients reveal some of the systematic effects that affect the fluxes. Results. The analysis of the constant sources shows that the early-stage photometric calibrations can reach an accuracy as low as 3 mmag.
Gaia Data Release 2 Riello, M.; De Angeli, F.; Evans, D. W. ...
Astronomy & astrophysics,
08/2018, Volume:
616
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Context. The second Gaia data release is based on 22 months of mission data with an average of 0.9 billion individual CCD observations per day. A data volume of this size and granularity requires a ...robust and reliable but still flexible system to achieve the demanding accuracy and precision constraints that Gaia is capable of delivering. Aims. We aim to describe the input data, the treatment of blue photometer/red photometer (BP/RP) low-resolution spectra required to produce the integrated GBP and GRP fluxes, the process used to establish the internal Gaia photometric system, and finally, the generation of the mean source photometry from the calibrated epoch data for Gaia DR2. Methods. The internal Gaia photometric system was initialised using an iterative process that is solely based on Gaia data. A set of calibrations was derived for the entire Gaia DR2 baseline and then used to produce the final mean source photometry. The photometric catalogue contains 2.5 billion sources comprised of three different grades depending on the availability of colour information and the procedure used to calibrate them: 1.5 billion gold, 144 million silver, and 0.9 billion bronze. These figures reflect the results of the photometric processing; the content of the data release will be different due to the validation and data quality filters applied during the catalogue preparation. The photometric processing pipeline, PhotPipe, implements all the processing and calibration workflows in terms of Map/Reduce jobs based on the Hadoop platform. This is the first example of a processing system for a large astrophysical survey project to make use of these technologies. Results. The improvements in the generation of the integrated G–band fluxes, in the attitude modelling, in the cross-matching, and and in the identification of spurious detections led to a much cleaner input stream for the photometric processing. This, combined with the improvements in the definition of the internal photometric system and calibration flow, produced high-quality photometry. Hadoop proved to be an excellent platform choice for the implementation of PhotPipe in terms of overall performance, scalability, downtime, and manpower required for operations and maintenance.
Abstract
We describe two ground-based observing campaigns aimed at building a grid of approximately 200 spectrophotometric standard stars (SPSS), with an internal ≃1 per cent precision and tied to ...Vega within ≃3 per cent, for the absolute flux calibration of data gathered by Gaia, the European Space Agency (ESA) astrometric mission. The criteria for the selection and a list of candidates are presented, together with a description of the survey strategy and the adopted data analysis methods. We also discuss a short list of notable rejected SPSS candidates and difficult cases, based on identification problems, literature discordant data, visual companions and variability. In fact, all candidates are also monitored for constancy (within ±5 mmag, approximately). In particular, we report on a CALSPEC standard, 1740346, that we found to be a δ Scuti variable during our short-term monitoring (1-2 h) campaign.
Gaia Data Release 2 Evans, D. W.; Riello, M.; De Angeli, F. ...
Astronomy & astrophysics,
08/2018, Volume:
616
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Aims. We describe the photometric content of the second data release of the Gaia project (Gaia DR2) and its validation along with the quality of the data. Methods. The validation was mainly carried ...out using an internal analysis of the photometry. External comparisons were also made, but were limited by the precision and systematics that may be present in the external catalogues used. Results. In addition to the photometric quality assessment, we present the best estimates of the three photometric passbands. Various colour-colour transformations are also derived to enable the users to convert between the Gaia and commonly used passbands. Conclusions. The internal analysis of the data shows that the photometric calibrations can reach a precision as low as 2 mmag on individual CCD measurements. Other tests show that systematic effects are present in the data at the 10 mmag level.
Aims. The inner disk of the Galaxy has a number of young star clusters dominated by red supergiants that are heavily obscured by dust extinction and observable only at infrared wavelengths. These ...clusters are important tracers of the recent star formation and chemical enrichment history in the inner Galaxy. Methods. During the technical commissioning and as a first science verification of the GIANO spectrograph at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, we secured high-resolution (R ≃ 50 000) near-infrared spectra of three red supergiants in the young Scutum cluster RSGC2. Results. Taking advantage of the full YJHK spectral coverage of GIANO in a single exposure, we were able to identify several tens of atomic and molecular lines suitable for chemical abundance determinations. By means of spectral synthesis and line equivalent width measurements, we obtained abundances of Fe and other iron-peak elements such as V, Cr, Ni, of alpha (O, Mg, Si, Ca and Ti) and other light elements (C, N, Na, Al, K, Sc), and of some s-process elements (Y, Sr). We found iron abundances between half and one third solar and solar-scaled X/Fe abundance patterns of iron-peak, alpha and most of the light elements, consistent with a thin-disk chemistry. We found a depletion of C/Fe and enhancement of N/Fe, consistent with CN burning, and low 12C/13C abundance ratios (between 9 and 11), requiring extra-mixing processes in the stellar interiors during the post-main-sequence evolution. Finally, we found a slight Sr/Fe enhancement and a slight Y/Fe depletion (by a factor of ≤2), with respect to solar.
We present Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photometry of the late-type dwarf galaxy NGC 1705 observed with the Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) in the F380W and F439W bands and with the Advanced ...Camera for Surveys/High-Resolution Channel (HRC) in the F330W, F555W, and F814W broad-band filters. We cross-correlate these data with previous ones acquired with the WFPC2 in the F555W, F814W bands, and derive multiband color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of the cross-identified individual stars and candidate star clusters. For the central regions of the galaxy, where HST-NICMOS F110W and F160W photometry is also available, we present U, B, V, I, J, H CMDs of the 256 objects with magnitudes measured in all bands. While our previous study based on F555W, F814W, F110W, and F160W data allowed us to trace the star formation history of NGC 1705 back to a Hubble time, the new data provide a better insight on its recent evolution. With the method of the synthetic CMDs, we confirm the presence of two strong bursts of star formation (SF). The older of the two bursts (B1) occurred between ~10 and 15 Myr ago, coeval to the age of the central super star cluster (SSC). The younger burst (B2) started ~3 Myr ago, and it is still active. The stellar mass produced by B2 amounts to ~106 M , and it is a factor of ~3 lower for B1. The interburst phase was likely characterized by a much lower level of SF rather than by its complete cessation. The two bursts show distinct spatial distributions: while B1 is centrally concentrated, B2 is more diffused, and presents ring and arclike structures that remind of an expanding shell. This suggests a feedback mechanism, in which the expanding superbubble observed in NGC 1705, likely generated by the 10-15 Myr burst, triggered the current strong SF activity. The excellent spatial resolution of the HRC allowed us to reliably identify 12 star clusters (plus the SSC) in the central ~26'' X 29'' region of NGC 1705, 10 of which have photometry in all the UBVIJH bands. The comparison of the cluster photometry with the GALEV populations synthesis models provides ages from 10 Myr to 1 Gyr, and masses between 104 and 105 M . The conspicuous cluster population in the central regions, with one SSC, one populous cluster, and several regular ones, confirm the strong star-forming activity of NGC 1705.
Gaia Data Release 1 (Corrigendum) Carrasco, J. M.; Evans, D. W.; Montegriffo, P. ...
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin),
05/2017, Volume:
601
Journal Article
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