Optical and UV Spectrophotometric Standard Stars
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This page last updated: June 9, 2005 - JMD
This page last checked: November 7, 2004 - JMD
White Dwarf Primary Spectrophotometric Standards
A group headed by R. Bohlin at STScI have established a set of four white dwarf standards based on comparison of White Dwarf model atmospheres with HST FOS spectra. They are described in Bohlin, Colina & Finlay,
(AJ, 110, 1316, 1995). The wavelength coverage is 10A to 3 microns. Extension of the white dwarf primary standards to more stars, giving 27 in total, are described in Bohlin (Proceedings of STScI HST Calibration Workshop, eds. A. Koratkar & C. Leitherer, p. 49, 1994) and in Bohlin
(AJ, 111, 1743, 1996).
The hydrogen white dwarfs (see list below) cover a wide range in effective temperature and the FOS spectrophotometry agrees with the model fluxes to within 2% over the whole UV-visible range. In addition, the simulated B and V magnitudes of the data agree to better than 1% with Landolt photometry. Bohlin et al. (1995) recommend these four White Dwarf standards as primary reference standards for all UV and optical calibrations from 1000 to >10000A.
The data are stored as flux values (ergs/cm/cm/s/A). They have also been converted to ABMAG using the formula ABMAG = -2.5 alog10(Fnu) - 48.59 (Hamuy et al., PASP, 104, 533, 1992), where Fnu is in ergs/cm/cm/s/Hz.
WD Primary Standard Stars
Star RA (J2000) Dec B-V V Type Teff Log g
d m s d ' '' (K)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
G191-B2B 05 05 30.6 +52 49 54 -0.326 11.781 DA0 61300 7.50
GD 71 05 52 27.5 +15 53 17 -0.249 13.032 DA1 32300 7.73
GD 153 12 57 02.4 +22 01 56 -0.286 13.346 DA1 38500 7.67
HZ 43 13 16 22.0 +29 05 57 -0.302 12.914 DA1 50000 8.00
