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M. W. Richmond (RIT), S. S. Allam (FNAL), R. C. Bohlin (STScI), S. E. Deustua (AAS), S. M. Kent (FNAL), M. L. Lampton (UC Berkeley), N. Mostek, S. L. Mufson (Indiana U), J. A. Smith (LANL), D. E. Tucker (FNAL), B. E. Woodgate (NASA GSFC), SNAP Collaboration
The SNAP focal plane is over half a meter wide and will be tiled with 72 array detectors, which will be split up to cover nine passbands in the visible and near infrared. As the spacecraft steps across the target region of the sky, celestial objects will fall on different detectors across the focal plane. In order to meet the goal of both precise and accurate photometry, one must very carefully determine any variations in sensitivity from one detector to the next, as well as within a single detector. We describe a plan for "flatfielding" this complicated instrument which incorporates both a series of special commissioning observations and the regular survey measurements. We provide algorithms as well as software to carry them out. In order to verify that our methods will work, we include procedures to generate test data with known characteristics. Our analysis can be extended to include the corrections one must make for color terms between detectors measuring (ostensibly) the same passband.
We thank the Office of Science at the Department of Energy for funding this research.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 5
© 2004. The American Astronomical Society.