Large-scale Spectrophotometric Relative Flux Calibration for the Roman High Latitude Wide Area Survey
August 2026 • 2026AJ....172..107N
Abstract • We consider the application of an übercalibration-like relative flux calibration to the grism observations of the Roman High Latitude Wide Area Survey (HLWAS). We propose a simplified model of the calibration with (i) an independent flat field for each detector in each exposure of the focal plane. In addition, we include two wavelength dependent components: (ii) a single wavelength throughput curve, modulated by (iii) a simple parabolic model for the throughput as a function of a source's focal plane position. We consider the impact of the dither scale, as well as the calibrator star magnitude cuts. We show that the width of the calibration residuals can be reduced to less than 1.5 mmag, or 0.15% in flux, within the optimal dither range 50″─240″. This wide range allows for significant flexibility in optimizing other parts of the observing program without diminishing the effectiveness of the relative flux calibration. We also discuss some improvements to the methodology that must be strongly considered before the calibration can be applied to real data. Finally, although we focused on the spectroscopic component of the HLWAS here, our formalism and results should carry over to the imaging surveys as well.
Links
IPAC Authors
(alphabetical)
