Synthetic RGB photometry of bright stars: Definition of the standard photometric system and UCM library of spectrophotometric spectra

Abstract

Although the use of RGB photometry has exploded in the last decades due to the advent of high-quality and inexpensive digital cameras equipped with Bayer-like colour filter systems, there is surprisingly no catalogue of bright stars that can be used for calibration purposes. Since due to their excessive brightness, accurate enough spectrophotometric measurements of bright stars typically cannot be performed with modern large telescopes, we have employed historical 13-colour medium-narrow-band photometric data, gathered with quite reliable photomultipliers, to fit the spectrum of 1346 bright stars using stellar atmosphere models. This not only constitutes a useful compilation of bright spectrophotometric standards well spread in the celestial sphere, the UCM library of spectrophotometric spectra, but allows the generation of a catalogue of reference RGB magnitudes, with typical random uncertainties ∼0.01 mag. For that purpose, we have defined a new set of spectral sensitivity curves, computed as the median of 28 sets of empirical sensitivity curves from the literature, that can be used to establish a standard RGB photometric system. Conversions between RGB magnitudes computed with any of these sets of empirical RGB curves and those determined with the new standard photometric system are provided. Even though particular RGB measurements from single cameras are not expected to provide extremely accurate photometric data, the repeatability and multiplicity of observations will allow access to a large amount of exploitable data in many astronomical fields, such as the detailed monitoring of light pollution and its impact on the night sky brightness, or the study of meteors, Solar system bodies, variable stars, and transient objects. In addition, the RGB magnitudes presented here make the sky an accessible and free laboratory for the calibration of the cameras themselves. © 2021 The Author(s).