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The problem of doing accurate stellar photometry with calibrated charge-coupled device (CCD) data amounts to that of condensing the intensity values of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of picture elements (pixels) into a list containing the magnitude and position of each star on the CCD image.
If the stellar field is not crowded, the astronomer can measure the magnitude of each star by doing the digital equivalent of aperture photometry. Stellar photometry becomes much more difficult if one wishes to study crowded stellar fields. The basic assumptions underlying the simple techniques of CCD aperture photometry are frequently not valid in crowded stellar fields and more sophisticated methods like Point-Spread-Function (PSF) model fitting must be used in order to achieve accurate photometry.
The process of determining the apparent magnitude of a star can be surprisingly complex even with a technique as simple as CCD aperture photometry. We start by assuming that our CCD observations have already been flat-fielded and calibrated. The basic process of aperture stellar photometry is, in principle, quite simple:
There are many techniques available for the detection of astronomical objects in CCD observations (see, e.g., Fischer & Kochanski 1994, Secker 1995, and references therein). The following is a short introduction to some of the techniques that can be used to detect stars in CCD observations.
The signal of a noisy digital image can frequently be enhanced by
suppressing high spatial frequency noise in the image.
For modern CCD stellar observations, this generally means suppressing
photon and CCD readout noise.
This can frequently be accomplished by using small digital low-pass
filters like
The following listing, for example, is a FORTRAN implementation of a simple peak detector algorithm which identifies any pixel that is greater than any of its eight neighbors:
C C A Simple Peak Detector Algorithm C C Copyleft (L) 1998 Kenneth J. Mighell (Kitt Peak National Observatory) C SUBROUTINE PEAKER(IMAGE,NX,NY,PEAKMIN,PEAKMAX) INTEGER NX, NY, X, Y, XX, YY REAL IMAGE(NX,NY), PEAKMIN, PEAKMAX, PIXEL, NEIGHBOR LOGICAL BINGO DO Y = 2,(NY-1) DO X = 2,(NX-1) PIXEL = IMAGE(X,Y) IF ((PIXEL.GE.PEAKMIN).AND.(PIXEL.LT.PEAKMAX)) THEN BINGO = .TRUE. DO YY = (Y-1),(Y+1) DO XX = (X-1),(X+1) IF (BINGO) THEN NEIGHBOR = IMAGE(XX,YY) IF (NEIGHBOR.GT.PIXEL) THEN BINGO = .FALSE. ELSE IF (NEIGHBOR.EQ.PIXEL) THEN IF ((XX.NE.X).OR.(YY.NE.Y)) THEN IF (((XX.LE.X).AND.(YY.LE.Y)) & .OR.((XX.GT.X).AND.(YY.LT.Y))) BINGO = .FALSE. ENDIF ENDIF ENDIF ENDDO ENDDO IF (BINGO) WRITE (*,*) & 'Found a peak at position (',X,',',Y,') with a value of',PIXEL ENDIF ENDDO ENDDO RETURN END C23456This algorithm works particularly well with CCD stellar observations that have had the background sky removed (e.g., LPD-filtered images).
Many CCD aperture photometry programs require the user to give the position of the star on the CCD frame. Most of these programs offer a choice of centering algorithms to determine the center of a star when provided with only a rough estimate. The review article of Stone (1989) compares the performance of five different digital centering algorithms under a wide range of atmospheric seeing and background-level conditions. It may be useful to create your own centroid algorithm based upon the special requirements of your particular analysis problem. The following listing, for example, is a FORTRAN implementation of a centroid algorithm which produces robust estimates without requiring an estimate of the the nearby ``sky'' background:
C C A Simple Centroid Algorithm C C A modification of the Modified Moment Method (Stone 1989,AJ,97,1227) C that works well with small apertures. C C Copyleft (L) 1998 Kenneth J. Mighell (Kitt Peak National Observatory) C SUBROUTINE CENTROID(X,Z,NN,N,X_IN,X_OUT) INTEGER N, NN ! <-- assumes that 1 <= N <= NN REAL X(NN), Z(NN), X_IN, X_OUT, BIG DOUBLE PRECISION DELTA, SUM1, SUM2, DIFF, XX DOUBLE PRECISION INTENSITY, POSITION, MINIMUM INTEGER I, J , NITERATIONS PARAMETER (BIG=1E30,NITERATIONS=10) MINIMUM = BIG DO I = 1,N INTENSITY = Z(I) ! <-- Z(I) is the intensity at the position X(I) MINIMUM = MIN(INTENSITY,MINIMUM) ENDDO XX = X_IN DELTA = 0D0 DO J = 1,NITERATIONS XX = XX + DELTA SUM1 = 0D0 SUM2 = 0D0 DO I = 1,N POSITION = X(I) INTENSITY = Z(I) DIFF = MAX((INTENSITY-MINIMUM),0D0) SUM1 = SUM1 + (POSITION-XX)*DIFF SUM2 = SUM2 + DIFF ENDDO DELTA = SUM1/SUM2 ENDDO X_OUT = XX RETURN END C23456This algorithm is a simplified version of the one used by my CCDCAP aperture stellar photometry package. If precise absolute or relatives positions from CCD observations are required, then one should investigate the extensive literature dedicated to CCD astrometry.
The background (``sky'') flux associated with a star is generally determined by analyzing the distribution of intensities of nearby background pixels. In the case of circular aperture photometry, the background flux is typically determined by analyzing the pixels in an annulus beyond the stellar aperture. The inner radius of the sky annulus is typically several FWHM1distant from the center of the aperture in order to avoid the inclusion of contaminating light from the star itself. The width of the annulus is typically large enough so that the annulus contains between 50 and a few hundred pixels.
Many aperture photometry programs allow the user to set the
background flux to be the modal value
of the background intensity distribution.
The mode of the background distribution is frequently estimated
by using the following useful approximation,
Many algorithms are available and most aperture photometry programs offer the user a choice of several methods to determine the background flux. For example, the popular APPHOT aperture photometry IRAF package offers the user the choice of 11 different ways the background can be estimated (Davis 1987). As always when using analysis software, the astronomer is strongly advised to carefully read the user documentation in order to understand which methodology will produce the best results for a given CCD observation or application.
The fundamental task of a CCD aperture photometry program
is to accurately measure all the electrons,
SA,
that fall within an aperture placed on a CCD image.
Unless the background flux, B, is exactly zero
electrons per pixel, one can never directly measure
the number of electrons, , from a star within the
aperture.
One measures, instead, the quantity
,
where is the aperture of the aperture (in pixels).
The instrumental magnitude of an
aperture measurement of a CCD observation of a star
can thus be defined as
It is clearly important to determine the observable quantities
SA, B, and as accurately as possible.
Let us consider the aperture area, , first.
If aj is the area of the jth aperture pixel, then
the total area of the aperture, , is simply
Let us now consider the sum of all electrons within the aperture (SA).
If zj is the intensity (in electrons) of the jth aperture pixel,
then one simple approximation of SA is
One way of reducing this systematic measurement error is to split each pixel into subpixels by using a bilinear pixel interpolation algorithm. One such algorithm is to use the two-dimensional analog of the sinc function: . This function, like many others, has the unfortunate effect of degrading the original image by spreading photons (electrons) beyond the original pixel. I created created the QUADPX bilinear pixel interpolation algorithm which splits a pixel into 4 subpixels whose sum is always equal to that of the original pixel (Appendix B of Mighell & Rich 1995). Numerical experiments have shown that using the QUADPX algorithm can reduce the systematic measurement error of critically-sampled Gaussians by a factor of 6. For example, the photometric error of an aperture radius of 2.0 pixels went from 0.068 mag using Equation (1) to 0.011 mag with the CCDCAP package which implements the QUADPX algorithm.
The best (smallest) stellar photometric errors (i.e., the largest signal-to-noise ratios) are generally obtained with relatively small apertures (see, e.g., Fig. 6 of Howell 1989). Analysis of theoretical CCD signal-to-noise-ratio equations (see, e.g., Newberry 1991, Howell 1992, Merline & Howell 1995, Howell et al. 1996, and references therein) shows that large apertures can have large photometric errors when the the total number of stellar photons in the aperture becomes comparable with the total number of background photons in the aperture. Furthermore, a measurement error for the background flux as small as just 1 electron per pixel can by itself produce large photometric uncertainties at large aperture radii. Small apertures, however, can be too small when they allow such a small fraction of the star light to be found within the aperture that the photometric error becomes dominated by small-number (a.k.a. counting or Poisson) statistics because little or no signal has been measured.
A Gaussian is a good model for the Point Spread Function of a ground-based CCD observation since the central core of a ground-based stellar profile is approximately Gaussian (King 1971). One can easily show that the optimum signal-to-noise ratio for a Gaussian PSF is obtained for a circular aperture radius of 1.6 (i.e., FWHM) which contains about 72% of the encircled-energy. Pritchet & Kline (1981) note that the signal-to-noise ratio is fairly insensitive to radius near the ``optimal'' radius value 1.6 for a Gaussian PSF; deviations from the optimal radius by as much as 50% generally make little difference. Since centering errors will be more critical for smaller apertures than for larger apertures, it is only prudent to err on the larger side by using apertures with radii which are larger than 0.68FWHM.
An aperture radius of FWHM makes an excellent practical compromise between concerns about systematic centering errors and diminishing signal-to-noise ratios typically obtained with larger aperture radii. By analyzing the CCD signal-to-noise ratio equations, one can show that brighter stars will have larger optimal aperture sizes than do fainter stars. If one must use only one aperture size, then it is clearly advantageous to chose a global aperture size which produces the smallest photometric errors for the faintest stars (i.e., use FWHM).
Small apertures frequently do not contain all the flux from a star. The amount of the missing star light can found by determining the appropriate aperture correction by measuring nearby bright isolated stars. Howell (1989) and Stetson (1990), among others, describe the process how aperture corrections can be accurately determined using the aperture growth-curve method.
Consider a ground-based CCD observation of two stars whose stellar images overlap. Assuming we already know the Point Spread Function of the observation, a simple model of the observation will have seven parameters: peak intensities (I1,I2), positions (X1,Y1,X2,Y2), and the background sky level B which is assumed to be the same for both component images. One finds that the parameters are not independent for overlapping stars with the presence of photon and readout noise. The conservation of photon flux will require that if I<