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At least 1,099 records · Page 61

A CATALOG OF CALIBRATOR STARS FOR NEXT-GENERATION OPTICAL INTERFEROMETERS

Benchmark stars with known angular diameters are key to calibrating interferometric observations. With the advent of optical interferometry, there is a need for suitably bright, well-vetted calibrator stars over a large portion of the sky. We present a catalog of uniformly computed angular diameters for 1510 stars in the northern hemisphere, brighter than V = 6 and with declinations -15°<δ<82°. The median angular stellar diameter is 0.529 mas. The list has been carefully cleansed of all known binary and multiple stellar systems. We derive the angular diameters for each of the stars by fitting spectral templates to the observed spectral energy distributions (SEDs) from literature fluxes. We compare these derived angular diameters against those measured by optical interferometry for 75 of the stars, as well as to 176 diameter estimates from previous calibrator catalogs, finding in general excellent agreement. The final catalog includes our goodness-of-fit metrics as well as an online atlas of our SED fits. The catalog presented here permits selection of the best calibrator stars for current and future visible-light interferometric observations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Metric analysis of minitrack optical and interferometer data

The network analysis program (NAP-2), which has the capability of simultaneously solving for orbits and tracking station error model terms, was, after several modifications, used in the calibration of minitrack stations using minitrack satellite measurements (self-calibration). Several support programs were written to aid in this task. A simultaneous four-arc solution was obtained. A comparison with optically determined arcs for the same time spans showed rms position differences of 67m, 86m, 124m and 168m for the 4 arcs considered. An apparatus incorporating a diffraction grating was designed and successfully used to measure the drift rate of the Fort Myers MOTS camera drive.

Brown, D. C.↗