Plate Archive Photometric Calibration by Gaia SED Fluxes and Applications

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Schrimpf
• Subject Area: Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 543340404

Astronomical photographic plates were used in the 20th century as detectors to characterize stars. At that time, there were no standardized spectral sensitivities, so the conversion of photometric data from one plate to comparable data from another plate with a different spectral sensitivity was approximately possible, only. The new Gaia data set, Gaia DR3, contains about 220 million spectra and calibrated magnitudes distributed over the entire sky. With these spectra and the known spectral sensitivities of the photo plates, a consistent photometric calibration of all photo plates can now be carried out for the first time. This means that these historical data now can be made available for long-term studies of the properties of the stars.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants