TITAN DR1: An Improved, Validated, and Systematically-Controlled Recalibration of ATLAS Photometry toward Type Ia Supernova Cosmology

TL;DR

This paper presents a systematic recalibration of ATLAS photometry for Type Ia supernova cosmology, achieving millimagnitude precision improvements and validating the calibration through multiple independent methods.

Contribution

It introduces a new, validated calibration procedure for ATLAS photometry that reduces systematic uncertainties, enabling more precise cosmological measurements with the TITAN DR1 dataset.

Findings

Reduced pixel-to-pixel zeropoint offsets from 8 to 4 mmag RMS.

Reduced chip-to-chip offsets from 17 to 3 mmag RMS.

Achieved calibration uncertainties of 5-10 mmag, supporting competitive cosmological constraints.

Abstract

ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial Last Alert System) is a time-domain survey using four telescopes, covering the entire sky. It has observed over 10,000 spectroscopically confirmed Type Ia supernovae (SNe~Ia), with thousands of cosmology-grade light curves (to be released as TITAN DR1). To prepare this massive, low-redshift dataset for cosmology, we evaluate and cross-calibrate ATLAS forced photometry using tertiary stars from the DES (Dark Energy Survey) Y6 release. The 5000 deg$^2$ DES footprint overlaps regions both in and out of the PS1 (Pan-STARRS DR1) footprint, allowing tests of the primary calibrator for the ATLAS Refcat2 catalog. Initial offsets are at the $\sim$40 mmag scale. To improve this we determine $\Delta$ zeropoint offsets for two cases: (1) pixel-to-pixel offsets within individual CCDs (reduced from $\sim$8 to $\sim$4 mmag RMS) and (2) chip-to-chip offsets across the 9 CCDs and filters (reduced from $\sim$17 to $\sim$3 mmag RMS). We also identify the largest systematic uncertainty as a transmission-function color dependence, requiring shifts in the assumed ATLAS filters at the $\sim$30 mmag level if uncorrected. We validate our calibration using (a) CALSPEC standards, (b) an independent tertiary catalog, and (c) distance moduli of cross-matched SNe~Ia, all showing improved consistency. Overall, we estimate combined calibration-related systematics at the $\sim$5--10 mmag level, supporting competitive cosmological constraints with the TITAN SN~Ia dataset.