WFST Astrometric Calibration -- I. Modeling Global Geometric Distortion with Zernike Polynomials

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Zernike polynomial-based self-calibration method for modeling and correcting global geometric distortion in WFST wide-field images, achieving high-precision astrometry aligned with Gaia DR3.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel application of Zernike polynomials for global geometric distortion modeling in wide-field astrometry, revealing optical and atmospheric effects influencing WFST data.

Findings

Median systematic uncertainty below 10 mas per exposure

WFST's global GD dominated by coma aberration

Stable CCD relative positions with <0.1 pixel translation

Abstract

Accurate modeling of geometric distortion is essential for precise astrometric calibration in wide-field imaging surveys. We present a self-calibration method based on Zernike polynomials, applied to imaging data from the Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST). Our approach constructs a global geometric distortion (GD) model from the position offsets of stars in the WFST r-band relative to Gaia DR3, achieving a median systematic uncertainty of below 10 mas for individual exposures. The correspondence between Zernike polynomials and optical aberrations reveals that the global GD of WFST is dominated by coma, inherent to the optical design, while rapid variations are likely attributed to the atmospheric dispersion corrector. Applying this method to 82 exposures from a single night (20250218), we find that the relative positions of the WFST CCDs remain stable, with standard deviations of less than 0.1 pixel in translation and 1.8 arcsec in rotation. The corrected WFST astrometric system is thereby tied to the Gaia DR3 coordinate frame, with further refinements to be presented in future work.