Photometric Response Functions of the SDSS Imager

TL;DR

This paper details the measurement and analysis of the SDSS imager's response functions over six years, highlighting aging effects, calibration accuracy, and their impact on photometric precision.

Contribution

It provides the first in situ measurements of SDSS CCD response functions, quantifies aging effects, and evaluates their influence on photometric accuracy and calibration procedures.

Findings

Response functions for SDSS passbands are characterized and tabulated.

A 30% decrease in u-band throughput over six years is observed.

Calibration procedures effectively mitigate most response variations, maintaining photometric errors below 0.01 mag.

Abstract

The monochromatic illumination system is constructed to carry out in situ measurements of the response function of the mosaicked CCD imager used in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The system is outlined and the results of the measurements, mostly during the first 6 years of the SDSS, are described. We present the reference response functions for the five colour passbands derived from these measurements, and discuss column to column variations and variations in time, and also their effects on photometry. We also discuss the effect arising from various, slightly different response functions of the associated detector systems that were used to give SDSS photometry. We show that the calibration procedures of SDSS remove these variations reasonably well with the resulting final errors from variant response functions being unlikely to be larger than 0.01 mag for g, r, i, and z bands over the entire duration of the survey. The considerable aging effect is uncovered in the u band, the response function showing a 30% decrease in the throughput in the short wavelength side during the survey years, which potentially causes a systematic error in photometry. The aging effect is consistent with variation of the instrumental sensitivity in u-band, which is calibrated out. The expected colour variation is consistent with measured colour variation in the catalog of repeated photometry. The colour variation is delta (u-g) ~ 0.01 for most stars, and at most delta (u-g) ~ 0.02 mag for those with extreme colours. We verified in the final catalogue that no systematic variations in excess of 0.01 mag are detected in the photometry which can be ascribed to aging and/or seasonal effects except for the secular u-g colour variation for stars with extreme colours.