# A distortion solution for the Bok telescope with four CCD chips

## TL;DR

This paper develops a new distortion correction method for the Bok telescope's four-CCD setup, significantly improving astrometric accuracy for the BASS survey by using polynomial fitting and lookup table corrections.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel distortion correction approach using two third-order polynomials and lookup tables tailored for multi-CCD telescopes, enhancing astrometric precision.

## Key findings

- Positional measurement precision about 20 mas
- Inter-chip gap changes within 5 pixels
- Roll angle variation less than 0.1 degree

## Abstract

The Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) is an imaging survey and uses the 2.3 m Bok telescope at Kitt Peak. In order to tap the astrometric potential of the Bok telescope and improve the astrometry of BASS, a distortion solution for the Bok telescope is made. In the past, we used a single lookup table to correct all the positional errors. However, this method can not be applied to the reduction of the observation for the Bok telescope where four CCD chips are equipped with. Then quite different from our previous method, two third-order polynomials were used to fit the lookup table. By using the polynomial Geometric Distortion (called GD hereafter) correction the astrometry of BASS is improved greatly. Moreover, an additional lookup table correction is found to be more effective to obtain a final GD. The results show that the positional measurement precision of the appropriate bright stars is estimated at about 20 mas and even better in each direction. Besides, the relative positions of the chips are measured. The change of the inter-chip gaps in horizontal or vertical is no more than 5 pixel between 2016 and 2017 and the change of the roll angle is no more than 0.1 degree.