Palomar Transient Factory Photometric Calibrator Catalog v1.0 Definitions

Overview

The Palomar Transient Factory Photometric Calibrator Catalog v1.0 is a photometrically calibrated catalog of non-variable sources from the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) observations. The catalog contains calibrated R_PTF-filter magnitudes for about 21 million sources brighter than magnitude 19, over an area of about 11233 deg^2. The magnitudes are provided in the PTF photometric system, and the color of a source is required in order to convert these magnitudes into other magnitude systems. The magnitudes in this catalog have typical accuracy of about 0.02 mag with respect to magnitudes from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The median repeatability of the catalog's magnitudes for stars between 15 and 16 mag, is about 0.01 mag, and it is better than 0.03 mag for 95% of the sources in this magnitude range. The main goal of this catalog is to provide reference magnitudes for photometric calibration of visible light observations.

If you use this catalog, please cite Ofek et al. (2012). The full catalog is available for download (547 MB).

Name Intype Units Description
ra double deg Right Ascension (J2000)
dec double deg Declination (J2000)
nP i Number of images that were used to derive the photometry
nT i Number of individual nights in which the images were taken
bstRMS f The best bright-star RMS value (APBSRMS parameter) over all nights used
Rptf f mag The median R-band magnitude in the PTF system over all epochs
Rerr f mag The error on the median R-band magnitude
Rmerr f mag The lower-bound error on the median R-band magnitude
Rperr f mag The upper-bound error on the median R-band magnitude
MuType f An indicator that can be used to estimate if the source is resolved
ErrMu f Error on MuType
PTFFIELD i The PTF unique field identifier
cI i The PTF CCD identifier (0 to 11)
flag i Flag indicating if source is reliable for photometric calibration