Photometric calibration of the Swift ultraviolet/optical telescope Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • We present the photometric calibration of the Swift UltraViolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) which includes: optimum photometric and background apertures, effective area curves, colour transformations, conversion factors for count rates to flux, and the photometric zero points (which are accurate to better than 4 per cent) for each of the seven UVOT broadband filters. The calibration was performed with observations of standard stars and standard star fields that represent a wide range of spectral star types. The calibration results include the position dependent uniformity, and instrument response over the 1600-8000A operational range. Because the UVOT is a photon counting instrument, we also discuss the effect of coincidence loss on the calibration results. We provide practical guidelines for using the calibration in UVOT data analysis. The results presented here supersede previous calibration results.

published proceedings

  • Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

altmetric score

  • 3

author list (cited authors)

  • Poole, T. S., Breeveld, A. A., Page, M. J., Landsman, W., Holland, S. T., Roming, P., ... Still, M.

citation count

  • 639

complete list of authors

  • Poole, TS||Breeveld, AA||Page, MJ||Landsman, W||Holland, ST||Roming, P||Kuin, NPM||Brown, PJ||Gronwall, C||Hunsberger, S||Koch, S||Mason, KO||Schady, P||Berk, D Vanden||Blustin, AJ||Boyd, P||Broos, P||Carter, M||Chester, MM||Cucchiara, A||Hancock, B||Huckle, H||Immler, S||Ivanushkina, M||Kennedy, T||Marshall, F||Morgan, A||Pandey, SB||De Pasquale, M||Smith, PJ||Still, M

publication date

  • August 2007