Contents

  1. An instruction to astronomical photometry / 1
    1. An invitation / 1
    2. The history of photometry / 5
    3. A typical photometer / 9
    4. The telescope / 11
    5. Light detectors / 13
      • Photomultiplier tubes / 13
      • PIN photodiodes / 18
    6. What happens at the telescope / 23
    7. Instrumental magnitudes and colors / 25
    8. Atmospheric extinction corrections / 28
    9. Transforming to a standard system / 29
    10. Other sources on photoelectric photometry / 30
  2. Photometric systems / 33
    1. Properties of the UBV system / 34
    2. The UBV transformation equations / 37
    3. The Morgan-Keenan spectral classification system / 38
    4. The M-K system and UBV photometry / 42
    5. Absolute calibration / 50
    6. Differential photometry / 52
    7. Other photometric systems / 54
      • The infrared extension of the UBV system / 55
      • The Stromgren four-color system / 55
      • Narrow-Band HBeta photometry / 57
  3. Statistics / 60
    1. Kinds of errors / 60
    2. Mean and median / 61
    3. Dispersion and standard deviation / 64
    4. Rejection of data / 66
    5. Linear least squares / 68
      • Derivation of linear least squares / 69
      • Equations for linear least squares / 70
    6. Interpolation and extrapolation / 73
      • Exact interpolation / 74
      • Smoothed interpolation / 76
      • Extrapolation / 77
    7. Signal-to-noise radio / 77
    8. Sources on statistics / 78
  4. Data reduction / 80
    1. A data-reduction overview / 80
    2. Dead-time correction / 81
    3. Calculation of instrumental magnitudes and colors / 85
    4. Extinction corrections / 86
      • Air mass calculations / 86
      • First-order extinction / 88
      • Second-order extinction / 90
    5. Zero-point values / 91
    6. Standard magnitudes and colors / 92
    7. Transformation coefficients / 93
    8. Differential photometry / 95
    9. The (U-B) problem / 98
  5. Observational calculations / 101
    1. Calculators and computers / 101
    2. Atmospheric refraction and dispersion / 104
      • Calculating refraction / 104
      • Effect of refraction on air mass / 106
      • Differential refraction / 107
    3. Time / 108
      • Solar time / 108
      • Universal time / 109
      • Sideral time / 110
      • Julian date / 112
      • Heliocentric julian date / 113
    4. Precession of coordinates / 116
    5. Altitude and azimuth / 119
      • Derivation of equations / 119
      • General considerations / 122
  6. Constructing the photometer head / 124
    1. The optical layout / 124
    2. The photomultiplier tube and its housing / 128
    3. Filters / 134
    4. Diaphrams / 138
    5. A simple photometer head design / 141
    6. Electronic construction / 147
    7. High-voltage power supply / 149
      • Batteries / 149
      • Filtered supply / 150
      • RF oscillator / 153
      • Setup and operation / 155
    8. Reference light sources / 155
    9. Specialized photometer designs / 157
      • A professional single-beam photometer / 157
      • Chopping photometers / 159
      • Dual-beam photometers / 161
      • Multifilter photometers / 163
  7. Pulse-counting electronics / 167
    1. Pulse amplifiers and discriminators / 167
    2. A pratical pulse amplifier and discriminator / 170
    3. Pulse counters / 172
    4. A general-purpose pulse counter / 173
    5. A microprocessor pulse counter / 178
    6. Pulse generators / 181
    7. Setup and operation / 182
  8. DC electronics / 184
    1. Operational amplifiers / 185
    2. An op-amp DC amplifier / 188
    3. Chart recorders and meters / 193
    4. Voltage-to-frequency converters / 195
    5. Constant current sources / 196
    6. Calibration and operation / 197
  9. Pratical observing techniques / 202
    1. Finding charts / 202
      • Available positional atlases / 203
      • Available photographic atlases / 204
      • Preparation of finding charts / 205
      • Published finding charts / 206
    2. Comparison stars / 207
      • Selection of comparison stars / 208
      • Use of comparison stars / 209
    3. Individual measurements of a single star / 210
      • Pulse-counting measurements / 210
      • DC photometry / 213
      • Differential photometry /216
      • Faint sources / 218
    4. Diaphragm selection / 220
      • The optical system /220
      • Stellar profiles / 223
      • Pratical considerations / 224
      • Background removal / 226
      • Aperture calibration / 227
    5. Extinction notes / 228
    6. Light of the night sky / 229
    7. Your first night at the telescope / 231
  10. Applications of photoelectric photometry / 238
    1. Photometric sequences / 238
    2. Monitoring flare stars / 240
    3. Occultation photometry / 245
    4. Intrinsic variables / 248
      • Short-period variables / 249
      • Medium-period variables / 250
      • Long-period variables / 254
      • The Eggen paper series / 254
    5. Eclipsing binaries / 256
    6. Solar system objects / 270
    7. Extragalactic photometry / 272
    8. Publication of data / 273
  11. Appendices / 279
    1. First-order extinction stars / 279
    2. Second-order extinction pairs / 286
    3. UBV standard field stars / 290
    4. Johnson UBV standard clusters / 297
      • Pleiades / 298
      • Praesepe / 298
      • IC 4665 / 302
    5. North polar sequence stars / 305
    6. Dead-time example / 308
    7. Extinction example / 311
      • Extinction correction for differential photometry / 311
      • Extinction correction for "all-sky" photometry / 313
      • Second-order extinction coefficients / 320
    8. Transformation coefficients examples / 322
      • DC example / 322
      • Pulse-counting example / 327
    9. Useful FORTRAN subroutines / 335
      • Dead-time correction for pulse-counting method / 336
      • Calculating Julian date from UT date / 336
      • General method for coordinate precession / 337
      • Linear regression (least squares) method / 338
      • Linear regression (least squares) method using the UBV transformation equations / 339
      • Calculating sideral time / 340
      • Calculating cartesian coordinates for 1950.0 / 341
    10. The light radiation from stars / 342
      • Intensity, flux, and luminosity / 342
      • Blackbody radiators / 349
      • Atmospheric extinction corrections / 351
      • Transforming to the standard system / 355
    11. Advanced statistics / 358
      • Statistical distributions / 358
      • Propagation of errors / 361
      • Multivariate least squares / 363
      • Signal-to-noise radio / 366
        1. Detective quantum efficiency / 367
        2. Region of noise dominance / 370
      • Theoretical differences between DC and pulse-counting thechniques / 372
        1. Pulse height distribution / 372
        2. Effect of weighting events on the DQE / 373
      • Pratical pulse DC comparison / 377
      • Theoretical S/N comparison of a photodiode and a photomultiplier tube / 378