Calibration of H{alpha} fluxes in SHS

DOI

The AAO/UKST SuperCOSMOS H{alpha} Survey (SHS) was, when completed in 2003, a powerful addition to extant wide-field surveys. The combination of areal coverage, spatial resolution and sensitivity in a narrow imaging band, still marks it out today as an excellent resource for the astronomical community. The 233 separate fields are available online in digital form, with each field covering 25deg^2^. The SHS has been the motivation for equivalent surveys in the north, and new digital H{alpha} surveys now beginning in the south such as VPHAS+. It has been the foundation of many important discovery projects with the Macquarie/AAO/Strasbourg H{alpha} planetary nebula project being a particularly successful example. However, the full potential of the SHS has been hampered by lack of a clear route to acceptable flux calibration from the base photographic data. We have determined the calibration factors for 170 individual SHS fields, and present a direct pathway to the measurement of integrated H{alpha} fluxes and surface brightnesses for resolved nebulae detected in the SHS. We also include a catalogue of integrated H{alpha} fluxes for >100 planetary and other nebulae measured from the SHS, and use these data to show that fluxes, accurate to +/-0.10-0.14dex (~25-35%), can be obtained from these fields. For the remaining 63 fields, a mean calibration factor of 12.0 counts/pixel/R can be used, allowing the determination of reasonable integrated fluxes accurate to better than +/-0.2dex (~50%). We outline the procedures involved and the caveats that need to be appreciated in achieving such flux measurements. This paper forms a handy reference source that will significantly increase the scientific utility of the SHS.

Cone search capability for table J/MNRAS/440/1080/table2 (A comparison of our SHS H{alpha} fluxes for over 100 PNe and other nebulae with independent integrated H{alpha} fluxes taken from the literature)

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.74401080
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/440/1080
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/MNRAS/440/1080
Related Identifier https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/MNRAS/440/1080
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/440/1080
Provenance
Creator Frew D.J.; Bojicic I.S.; Parker Q.A.; Pierce M.J.; Gunawardhana M.L.P.,Reid W.A.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2015
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Interstellar medium; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics