AutoCal: A software application for calibrating photometric data

Authors

  • Daniël J. Wium Department of Computer Science and Informatics, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
  • Brian van Soelen Department of Physics, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2016/20150034

Keywords:

astrophysics, software, photometry, Be/X-ray binaries, calibration

Abstract

We present a software application for the calibration of stellar magnitudes in the absence of standard stars. It uses an existing algorithm to match stars in the target’s field of view to catalogue entries and computes the average offset between the two sets of magnitudes using a weighted least-squares approach. This offset is used to calibrate the target’s instrumental magnitude. The software application was used to calibrate magnitudes for six Be/X-ray binary sources in the Small Magellanic Cloud and the results were compared with published results for these sources. Where comparisons were possible, our results agreed with those results within the uncertainties specified. Infrared variability was found for all six of the sources tested. The interactive outlier removal that was made possible by our software allowed for smaller uncertainties to be reported for our results.

The AutoCal software is openly available here: http://hdl.handle.net/11660/2382

Published

2016-03-30

Issue

Section

Research Article

How to Cite

Wium, D. J., & van Soelen, B. (2016). AutoCal: A software application for calibrating photometric data. South African Journal of Science, 112(3/4), 8. https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2016/20150034
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