Only an idiot would suggest recalibrating HST imagers, given that STScI has a set of teams of people who do this! Nonetheless, on the plane to Long Beach, I started writing a proposal to do just that. The key idea is that stars illuminate the device slightly differently than the sky or any calibration source: They are compact, and they have particular spectral energy distributions (SEDs). Fadely, Fergus, and I are close to having a method to infer the calibration from the science observations of actual stars.
This sounds suspiciously like a new project.
ReplyDeleteI don't appreciate you noticing that fact.
DeleteWant an HST data set with a *lot* of stars and broad spectral coverage? And many hand-annotated background galaxies? I've got it kicking around...
ReplyDelete