Re: Detrending Airmass
Posted by
karenacollins on
Aug 13, 2020; 7:22am
URL: http://astroimagej.170.s1.nabble.com/Detrending-Airmass-tp1437p1440.html
Hi Jessica,
Airmass coefficients of -0.0012 and -0.0045 seem reasonably small,
but there's no real upper or lower bound on reasonable values that I
could quote.
From your description, it sounds like your comp stars are fairly
flat without detrending. That is helpful and possibly gives you
information on the amount of airmass trend that might be contributed
from those light curves. However, if they have significantly
different effective temperatures (Teff) from the target star, the
differential target star light curve could still have some airmass
trend. I think the only way to disentangle the pulsations from
airmass trend is to look up the Teff of your target star and then
try to find some comparison stars in your field with similar
brightness and Teff. The TIC (TESS Input Catalog) on MAST lists a
reasonable Teff for almost all stars. There's an interactive mode
that lets you click on stars in an image to see the Teff of stars in
nearby your target, or you can click on the catalog entry and it
will highlight the corresponding star.
If you are not familiar with the TESS catalog on MAST, go to:
https://mast.stsci.edu/portal/Mashup/Clients/Mast/Portal.html
-Then in the pull down menu at the top-left, select "MAST Catalogs",
and then just below a second pull down menu will appear. Make sure
it says "TESS Input v8". Then enter your target's ra and dec and a
radius of a circular region to search in the "and enter target" box,
like this:

-Then click search (r=5m means show the catalog for all stars within
5 arc
min of the target coordinates).
You will the see a display similar to the one below with the catalog
values on the left and the image display on the right. Look for
stars in your field with a similar magnitude and Teff.
I can 't support the above tool, but wanted to give you an idea
about it, in case it's helpful.
Karen
On 8/12/2020 10:56 AM, mtsacobservatory
[via AstroImageJ] wrote:
Hi Karen,
I tried detrending the target delta Scuti star with airmass using
two different fit modes (the full curve transit dip that you
suggested, and also the full curve flat line), but both skewed the
lightcurve. I also tried running an airmass detrend on two of the
comp stars. Even if that detrending doesn't automatically apply
to the rel_flux_T1, it should at least give us an idea if airmass
was a significant problem, right? Both comp stars look fairly
flat, as they should, and the airmass coefficients I got were
-0.0012 and -0.0045. Is there a reasonable range that people use
to know if this value is acceptable?
Thanks again for your help,
Jessica Draper
Mt. SAC Observatory
Walnut, CA