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Stars--near-infrared magnitudes--adaptive optics.

The near-infrared instruments in the upcoming Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will be assisted by a multi conjugate Adaptive Optics (AO) system. For the efficient operation of the AO system, during observations, a near-infrared guide star catalog which goes as faint as 22 mag in ${\rm J}_{{\rm Vega}}$ band is essential and such a catalog does not exist. A methodology, based on stellar atmospheric models, to compute the expected near-infrared magnitudes of stellar sources from their optical magnitudes is developed. The method is applied and validated in JHKs bands for a magnitude range of ${\rm J}_{\rm{Vega}}$ 16--22 mag. The methodology is also applied and validated using the reference catalog of PAN STARRS. We verified that the properties of the final PAN STARRS optical catalog will satisfy the requirements of TMT IRGSC and will be one of the potential sources for the generation of the final catalog. In a broader context, this methodology is applicable for the generation of a guide star catalog for any existing/upcoming near-infrared telescopes.

Smitha Subramanian^{1 2} Annapurni Subramaniam¹ T Sivarani¹ Luc Simard³ G. C. Anupama¹ Kim Gillies⁴ A. N. Ramaprakash⁵ B. Eswar Reddy¹

1. Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Koramangala, Bangalore 560 034, India.
2. Kavli Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
3. National Research Council of Canada, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, 5071 West Saanich Road, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
4. Thirty Meter Project Office, Pasadena, California, USA.
5. Inter University Center for Astronomy & Astrophysics, Pune 411 007, India.

Published

2 September 2016

Manuscript received

20 April 2016

Manuscript revised

12 July 2016

Accepted

1 August 2016

Final version published online

2 September 2016