On the Problem of Standard Fields for CCD Astrometry

Extract

At the start of CCD observations one must investigate the metrological properties of the complex instrument: optics + CCD. One needs a densely spaced set of stars with precise coordinates and magnitudes. We first used the Pleiades catalogue by Eichhorn et al. (1970). Experimental observations were started at Pulkovo in 1993 using a very small refractor (D = 100 mm, F = 712 mm) equipped with a CCD ISD015A (520 × 580 pixels, 18 × 24 microns). The focal length of our astrograph provides an angular field of view of 45 × 67 arcmin (angular scale is 5.2 × 7 arcsec/pixel). With different exposures we can observe all stars with magnitudes from 2 to 16. The first observations were made to evaluate the accuracy of our positional and photometric measurements. Unfortunately, it appears that the catalogue of the Pleiades by Eichhorn is not good enough for this purpose because its epoch is very far from that of our observations and proper motions were not provided for the majority of the stars. The internal precision of our measurements (0.1–0.3 arcsec) allows us to determine the corrections to the stellar positions by Eichhorn et al. (1970)