Table of Contents

Calibrator Catalogs


Observation Planning and Calibrator Selection

getCal

getCal is an interferometric observation planning software suite: it and its constituent tools can be used to resolve common star names into standard catalog designations and astrometry; extract visibility calibrators from the Hipparcos catalog according to a variety of geometric, brightness, and astrophysical criteria; compute target zenith and delay accessibility; interface with the Simbad astronomical database, the PTI and KI sequencer GUIs, visibility calibration codes, and sky visualization software. getCal also has other uses, is extremely portable, can be autonomously driven over a list of sources, and can be accessed either from either the Unix command line or a (Perl/Tk) GUI.

ASPRO-VLTI

ASPRO-VLTI provides tools to determine the optimal VLTI configuration and interferometric calibrators to achieve the user's astrophysical goals. The optimization is performed through estimating synthetic interferometric observables (visibilities) as well as through fitting theoretical models on these quantities. The fitting process takes into account the measurement errors of the interferometric signal.

CHARA Observation Planning Tool

A graphical user interface software tool written in the Interactive Data Language (IDL) to help plan interferometric observations with the CHARA Array. The GUI allows the user to select (1) the waveband for the observation, (2) the target HD number from Hipparcos catalog, (3) and angular diameter, (4) a CHARA baseline, (5) the Pipes of Pan “POP” configuration, and (6) date. Numerous ploting options are available. The software calculates for which hour angles the Optical Path Length Compensator delay compensation is possible and also calculates the time of astronomical twilight.


List of Known Poor Calibrators

Registry of stars maintained by Christian Hummel at the European Southern Observatory, and originally hosted by Prof. John Monnier at the University of Michigan. Stars are listed that are known to be poor calibrators for certain baselines and wavelengths.


Catalogs of Measurements of Stars

Summary of Resources

Group Wavelengths Calibrator Catalog Software Tools Documentation
COAST V,H None mfit Data Exchange format
MIDI N Calvin MIDISOFT, MIA+EWS NA
NPOI V ASCII STARWHEEL (Oyster) Oyster
VLTI K,N Calibrators/CALVIN VisCalc (Previews) SimVLTI
FRINGE - NA MC3D Download site
JMMC - NA VINCI
J. Monnier - NA IDL Routines Data Exchange Format

The VLTI group have an ongoing calibrator program to develop a catalog which will be made publically available.


As suggested by Rachel Akeson (MSC) a simple common calibrator catalog would have at the following.

Define a standard common calibrator format which includes

It would then be useful to have a web interface for

Updated 12 September 2008