Brorfelde Schmidt CCD Catalog (BSCC)

TL;DR

The BSCC provides precise positions and photometry for approximately 13.7 million stars north of +49 deg declination, based on extensive CCD observations and cross-referenced with major catalogs.

Contribution

It is the first large-scale star catalog combining CCD-based astrometry and photometry with systematic error analysis and integration of 2MASS data.

Findings

Positional errors are about 20-200 mas for stars in the R=10-18 mag range.

Systematic errors in BSCC are up to 30 mas when compared with 2MASS and SDSS.

The catalog includes multi-band photometry and will be publicly available.

Abstract

The Brorfelde Schmidt CCD Catalog (BSCC) contains about 13.7 million stars, north of +49 deg Declination with precise positions and V, R photometry. The catalog has been constructed from the reductions of 18,667 CCD frames observed with the Brorfelde Schmidt Telescope between 2000 and 2007. The Tycho-2 catalog was used for astrometric and photometric reference stars. Errors of individual positions are about 20 to 200 mas for stars in the R = 10 to 18 mag range. External comparisons with 2MASS and SDSS reveal possible small systematic errors in the BSCC of up to about 30 mas. The catalog is supplemented with J, H, and K_s magnitudes from the 2MASS catalog. The catalog data file (about 550 MB ASCII, compressed) will be made available at the Strasbourg Data Center (CDS).