Category

Standard Photometric Stars

The central function of Photometry is accurate measurement of an object, typically a star, in terms of its brightness either overall magnitude/flux by dividing the flux into varying bands of the Electromagnetic Spectrum.

Whatever your location is on the Earth, you use a defined measurement system to determine the length of varying objects: Imperial and Metric.

When measuring stellar flux, what do you perform measurements and analysis against? This becomes the ultimate question so that there aren’t multiple different measurements for a singular object.

Standard Photometric Stars provide a means to, not only calibrate your photometric system, but give a common “yardstick” from which all measurements can be compared.

IMPORTANT: This focuses on standard stars, not standard filter types.

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