Exploring the Variable Sky with LINEAR. I. Photometric Recalibration with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
Abstract
We describe photometric recalibration of data obtained by the asteroid survey LINEAR. Although LINEAR was designed for astrometric discovery of moving objects, the data set described here contains over 5 billion photometric measurements for about 25 million objects, mostly stars. We use Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data from the overlapping ~10,000 deg^2 of sky to recalibrate LINEAR photometry and achieve errors of 0.03 mag for sources not limited by photon statistics with errors of 0.2 mag at r ~ 18. With its 200 observations per object on average, LINEAR data provide time domain information for the brightest four magnitudes of the SDSS survey. At the same time, LINEAR extends the deepest similar wide-area variability survey, the Northern Sky Variability Survey, by 3 mag. We briefly discuss the properties of about 7000 visually confirmed periodic variables, dominated by roughly equal fractions of RR Lyrae stars and eclipsing binary stars, and analyze their distribution in optical and infrared color-color diagrams. The LINEAR data set is publicly available from the SkyDOT Web site.
Additional Information
© 2011 American Astronomical Society. Received 2011 July 13; accepted 2011 September 23; published 2011 November 4. B. Sesar thanks NSF grant AST-0908139 to J. G. Cohen and NSF grant AST-1009987 to S. R. Kulkarni for partial support. Z.I. acknowledges support by NSF grants AST-0707901 and AST-1008784 to the University of Washington, by NSF grant AST-0551161 to LSST for design and development activity, and by the Croatian National Science Foundation grant O-1548- 2009. Partial support for this work was provided by NASA through a contract issued by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. The LINEAR program is sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NRA Nos. NNH09ZDA001N, 09-NEOO09-0010) and the United States Air Force under Air Force Contract FA8721-05-C-0002. Opinions, interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the United States Government. This research made use of tools provided by Astrometry.net.Attached Files
Published - Sesar2011p16529Astron_J.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 28547
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20111221-114448447
- AST-0908139
- NSF
- AST-1009987
- NSF
- AST-0707901
- NSF
- AST-1008784
- NSF
- AST-0551161
- NSF
- O-1548-2009
- Croatian National Science Foundation
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- NNH09ZDA001N
- NASA
- 09-NEOO09-0010
- NASA
- FA8721-05-C-0002
- Air Force
- Created
-
2011-12-21Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field