Digitization and astrometric calibration of Carte du Ciel photographic plates with Gaia~DR1

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that commercial digital cameras can digitize Carte du Ciel plates with sufficient astrometric and photometric accuracy for scientific use, using Gaia DR1 for calibration.

Contribution

It introduces a cost-effective method for digitizing old photographic plates with high accuracy, leveraging Gaia DR1 and other catalogs for calibration.

Findings

Achieved astrometric accuracy of ~0.15 arcseconds

Photometric calibration uncertainty around 0.25 magnitudes

Detected the Kostinsky effect in triple-exposure plates

Abstract

We want to study whether the astrometric and photometric accuracies obtained for the Carte du Ciel plates digitized with a commercial digital camera are high enough for scientific exploitation of the plates. We use a digital camera Canon EOS~5Ds, with a 100mm macrolens for digitizing. We analyze six single-exposure plates and four triple-exposure plates from the Helsinki zone of Carte du Ciel (+39 degr < delta < 47 degr). Each plate is digitized using four images, with a significant central area being covered twice for quality control purposes. The astrometric calibration of the digitized images is done with the data from the Gaia TGAS (Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution) of the first Gaia data release (Gaia DR1), Tycho-2, HSOY (Hot Stuff for One Year), UCAC5 (USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog), and PMA catalogs. The best astrometric accuracy is obtained with the UCAC5 reference stars. The astrometric accuracy for single-exposure plates is sigma(R.A.)=0.16" and sigma(Dec.)=0.15" expressed as a Gaussian deviation of the astrometric residuals. For triple-exposure plates the astrometric accuracy is sigma(R.A.)=0.12" and sigma(Dec.)=0.13". The 1-sigma uncertainty of photometric calibration is about 0.28 mag and 0.24 mag for single- and triple-exposure plates, respectively. We detect the photographic adjacency (Kostinsky) effect in the triple-exposure plates. We show that accuracies at least of the level of scanning machines can be achieved with a digital camera, without any corrections for possible distortions caused by our instrumental setup. This method can be used to rapidly and inexpensively digitize and calibrate old photographic plates enabling their scientific exploitation.