Verifying the STIS Time Dependent Sensitivity Trends with the Primary CALSPEC Standards

TL;DR

This study verifies the accuracy of the Hubble STIS instrument's time-dependent sensitivity corrections using primary CALSPEC standards, confirming their reliability within a 2% margin across wavelengths.

Contribution

It introduces an independent validation method using primary CALSPEC standards to confirm the existing TDS correction trends for STIS L-mode observations.

Findings

TDS corrections agree with primary standards within 2% residuals.

Residual dispersion varies with wavelength, lowest in NUV, highest in NIR.

No long-term deviations or variability detected in TDS monitoring stars.

Abstract

The STIS team monitors the time dependent sensitivity (TDS) of each grating with one from a set of three secondary CALSPEC standard stars: GRW+70D5824, AGK+81D266, and BD+28D4211. Here, we use the three primary CALSPEC White Dwarf standard stars, dubbed the standard star "triad" (GD71, GD153, G191B2B), as an independent set of standards to verify the accuracy of STIS TDS corrections derived from the TDS monitoring stars, increasing the sample for each STIS L-mode from one up to three or four standard stars. We focus on triad star observations using the STIS L-mode gratings (e.g., G140L, G230L, etc.) with the same configuration as our standard TDS monitoring programs, and compare the triad observations to the TDS pipeline trends. Our analysis indicates the relative net count rates inferred from the triad standards agree with the TDS trends derived from the TDS monitoring stars with average residuals $<$ 2$\%$ across the full wavelength range of STIS, suggesting our current TDS L-mode trends are reliable and robust. We note that the dispersion in the residuals does vary with wavelength, with the NUV showing the lowest spread ($\pm$ 0.32$\%$ at 2400-2500 Angstroms) and the NIR the largest ($\pm$ 1.32$\%$ at 9500-9900 Angstroms); however, this scatter is also seen in our measurements of the TDS monitoring stars and is more indicative of other instrumental effects. Our findings rule out long term deviations, such as variability in our TDS monitoring stars, within measurement uncertainties.