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Featureless stars: Flux Calibration for Extremely Large Telescopes [dataset] Open Access

The spectrophotometric flux calibration of recent spectroscopic surveys has reached a limiting systematic precision of approximately 1-3 percent, and is often biased near the wavelengths associated with H I Balmer absorption. As we prepare for the next generation of imaging and spectroscopic surveys, and high-precision cosmology experiments, we must find a way to address this systematic. Towards this goal, we have identified a global network of 29 bright (G<17.5) featureless white dwarf stars that have a spectral energy distribution consistent with an almost pure blackbody form over the entire optical and near-infrared wavelength range. Based on this sample, we have computed the systematic uncertainty and AB magnitude offsets associated with Gaia, SDSS, SMSS, PanSTARRS, DES, and 2MASS, and we have also checked the consistency of our objects with both GALEX and WISE. The magnitude range of the featureless stars reported here are ideally suited to observations taken with the forthcoming generation of extremely large telescopes, as well as calibrating the survey data acquired by the Rubin, Euclid and Roman observatories. Finally, all of the high-precision spectrophotometric standard stars reported here have been included in the latest release of the PypeIt data reduction pipeline (Prochaska et al. 2020).

Descriptions

Resource type

Dataset

Contributors

Creator: Cooke, Ryan ¹
Contact person: Cooke, Ryan ¹
Data collector: Cooke, Ryan ¹
Data curator: Cooke, Ryan ¹
Editor: Cooke, Ryan ¹
Contact person: Suzuki, Nao ²
Data collector: Suzuki, Nao ²
Data collector: Prochaska, J. Xavier ³

¹ Durham University
² Florida State University
³ University of California at Santa Cruz

Funder

Science and Technology Facilities Council
Royal Society

Research methods

Astronomical spectroscopy

Other description

All research data in FITS format. All spectra acquired, including 29 featureless stars.

Keyword

astronomy spectra
white dwarf
flux calibration
featureless stars

Subject

Astronomy
White dwarf stars

Location

Language

Cited in

Identifier

ark:/32150/r28336h1959
doi:10.15128/r28336h1959

Rights

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY)

Publisher

Durham University

Date Created

File Details

Depositor

R.J. Cooke

Date Uploaded

4 December 2025, 22:12:17

Date Modified

5 December 2025, 13:12:13

Audit Status

Audits have not yet been run on this file.

Characterization

File format: zip (ZIP Format)

Mime type: application/zip

File size: 215476638

Last modified: 2025:12:04 22:09:41+00:00

Filename: CookeSuzukiProchaska2026.zip

Original checksum: f5f33c8e7be4b94f689476c4dd97c6c3