The Advanced Camera for Surveys
  instrument > detectors >
Introduction

CCDs
WFC Description
Status
Flight Builds
HRC Description
Status
Flight Builds
CCD links
History

MAMA
Introduction
Specifications
Images

News
Latest news
Team Only


Detector Papers

Throughput
Zeropoint

Last updated
21 August 2001 15:49:14

Maintained by
sirianni@pha.jhu.edu


Printable version

Zeropoint & Sky Background

ACS Sky Count Rate (in e-/pix/s)

WFC HRC
Zodiacal Light Zodiacal Light
FILTER Low Avg. High Low Avg. High
F435W 0.0108 0.0180 0.0360 0.0073 0.0122 0.0244
F555W 0.0204 0.0340 0.0680 0.0137 0.0229 0.0458
F606W 0.0510 0.0851 0.1701 0.0313 0.0521 0.1043
F814W 0.0453 0.0755 0.1511 0.0232 0.0386 0.0772
F475W 0.0200 0.0333 0.0667 0.0139 0.0232 0.0464
F625W 0.0336 0.0560 0.1120 0.0195 0.0324 0.0648
F775W 0.0323 0.0538 0.1076 0.0161 0.0269 0.0538
F850LP 0.0223 0.0371 0.0742 0.0126 0.0210 0.0420
G800L 0.0755 0.1259 0.2517 0.0414 0.0690 0.1380

NOTE:
  • All calculations are for Earth Shine = SHADOW
  • Zodiacal spectrum used in the calculations is the solar spectrum reddened according to the prescription given in Leinert et al. 1997 (A&ASS, 127,1) and normalized by the DIRBE (Wright, astro-ph/0106412) at 1.5 micron and the darkest HDF-N data. We thank Greg Aldering (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) for providing the references and the spectrum to us.
  • The convention for the LOW, AVG and HIGH zodiacal background is as follows: HIGH is the typical value for the ecliptic plane, AVG is 50% of HIGH, and LOW is 30% of HIGH - representative for the ecliptic pole (see Leinert et al. 1997 for dependence on the ecliptic latitude).
  • The brightness of the zodiacal light at the ecliptic pole (the LOW value) corresponds to V = 23.22 mag/arcsec^2, i.e. about 0.08 mag brighter than the canonical value of 23.3 mag/arcsec^2.
  • F850LP (SDSS z) values are probably underestimated, as the CCD QE and system throughput longward of 1 mic are not well established.

Zeropoint AB mag

WFC HRC
F220W NUV broad - 24.29
F250W NUV broad - 24.61
F330W Johnson U - 24.73
F435W Johnson B 25.41 25.24
F555W Johnson V 25.51 25.14
F606W Broad V 26.31 25.87
F814W Johnson I 25.80 25.13
F475W SDSS g 25.82 25.52
F625W SDSS r 25.71 25.22
F775W SDSS i 25.49 24.77
F850LP SDSS z 24.75 24.03

NOTE: The quoted zero points refer to an infinite aperture measurements, after correction for a 5% loss effect not included in SYNPHOT tables.

How the zero points have been calculated:

We used SYNPHOT and the included ACS tables as in Jan 2000: a synthetic A0-V spectrum normalized to a Johnson V = 20 VEGAMAG has been used as input. We determined the AB mag for the syntetic spectrum in each camera with each filter and the equivalent counts per second rate. We used a gain factor of 1 e-/DN. The total number of counts/sec has been multiplied by 0.95 to take into account future efficiency losses. Conversion to AB mag ( AB = AB_nu + V ) are obtained as:

ABmag = -2.5 log (DN/sec) + zeropoint