FORS2 Rotating Flat Field Systematics Fixed — Recent Exchange of FORS LADC Prisms Improves the Long-known Flat-fielding Problem [IMA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.03865


For many years the FORS2 instrument has suffered from artefacts in the flat fields caused by surface inhomogeneities on the longitudinal atmospheric dispersion corrector (LADC) that affected high-precision photometric and spectroscopic measurements. Recently, the FORS LADC prisms were exchanged, and our analysis of a large number of flat fields shows that this exchange has resulted in a significant decrease in the level of small-scale artefacts.

Read this paper on arXiv…

H. Boffin, S. Moehler and W. Freudling
Tue, 15 Mar 16
75/77

Comments: 2 pages; to appear in the March 2016 issue of the ESO Messenger