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Catalog of reference stars for long baseline stellar interferometry

Authors :: Pascal Bordé
Guy Perrin
Vincent Coudé du Foresto
G. Chagnon
arXiv, Import
Wesley A. Traub
Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique (LESIA)
Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Observatoire de Paris
Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7 (UPD7)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Source :: Interferometry for Optical Astronomy II
Publication Year :: 2003
Publisher :: SPIE, 2003.
Abstract: The calibration process of long baseline stellar interferometers requires the use of reference stars with accurately determined angular diameters. We present a catalog of 374 carefully chosen stars among the all-sky network of infrared sources provided by Cohen et al. 1999. The catalog benefits from a very good sky coverage and a median formal error on the angular diameters of only 1.2%. Besides, its groups together in a homogeneous handy set stellar coordinates, uniform and limb-darkened angular diameters, photometric measurements, and other parameters relevant to optical interferometry. In this paper, we describe the selection criteria applied to qualify stars as reference sources. Then, we discuss the catalog's statistical properties such as the sky coverage or the distributions of magnitudes and angular diameters. We study the number of available reference stars as a function of the baseline and the precision needed on the visibility measurements. Finally, we compare the angular diameters predicted in Cohen et al. 1999 with existing determinations in the literature, and find a very good agreement.<br />Comment: Conference "Interferometry for Optical Astronomy II", SPIE 2002