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Recent absolute calibration work at Palomar Mountain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2015

J. B. Oke
Affiliation:
Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories, Carnegie Institution of Washington, and California Institute of Technology, U.S.A.
R. Schild
Affiliation:
Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories, Carnegie Institution of Washington, and California Institute of Technology, U.S.A.

Abstract

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A four inch hermetically sealed reflecting telescope has been attached to the prime-focus scanner to provide an observing system for absolute calibration work. Light sources, including a platinum and a copper furnace, are observed at a distance of approximately 1200 feet. Since the telescope focal length is only 13 inches these sources look like stars. Thus bright stars such as α Lyr are compared directly with the light sources under identical instrumental conditions.

It has been found that horizontal extinction can be abnormally large; therefore it is measured several times each night. The absolute calibration is being derived at present from 3500 Å to 11000 Å and will be extended to 3200 Å as soon as possible. The calibration lies approximately midway between that measured recently by Hayes and that adopted some years ago by Oke. A very preliminary value for the absolute flux from α Lyr at 5556 Å is 3.5 × 10−20 ergs sec−1 cm−2 Hz−1 or 3.4 × 10−9 ergs sec−1 cm−2 Å−1.

Type
Part I: Stellar Fluxes
Copyright
Copyright © Reidel 1970 

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