Investigating ACS/WFC Amp-to-Amp Sensitivities

TL;DR

This study tests the reported 5% sensitivity difference between WFC1 and WFC2 detectors using new calibration data, finding no significant offset in two filters and suggesting spectral type effects in the third.

Contribution

It provides a direct, empirical test of previously reported sensitivity variations, clarifying the detector calibration status.

Findings

Good agreement within 1% for F606W and F814W filters across multiple stars and positions.

No significant sensitivity offset detected between WFC1 and WFC2 in these filters.

Sensitivity variations in the F435W filter may be due to spectral type effects, not detector sensitivity.

Abstract

Recently, the ACS team applied an Ubercal framework to assess the photometric repeatability of stars observed across the WFC detector using 15 years of post-SM4 calibration data in the globular cluster 47 Tuc (Ryan et al., 2024). A surprising finding was an apparent 0.05 mag global difference in sensitivity between the WFC1 and WFC2 chips, which had not been seen in prior tests of sensitivity variations around the field-of-view. Given the many degenerate variables within the Ubercal framework such as CTE losses, time-dependent sensitivity, and flat-field corrections, we obtained new calibration data to perform a straightforward test of the reported $\sim$5$\%$ flux offset between detectors. We observed three white dwarf standards with three filters at four positions on the detector (each on a different amplifier), but with the same number of x and y pixel transfers to mitigate differential CTE-related effects. For the F606W and F814W filters, the agreements are good to 0.4$\%$ on average, and always 1$\%$ or better in individual cases. The consistency of these two filters over all three stars and the four dither positions provides very strong evidence against the large global sensitivity offset between WFC1 and WFC2 as seen in the Ubercal work. Larger variations seen in the bluer F435W filter are likely a result of a sensitivity of the flat field in that filter to underlying spectral type, warranting a future solution.