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# Short Proof of Jacobi’s Identity for Poisson Brackets

## Abstract

Making use of the theory of infinitesimal canonical transformations, a concise proof is given of Jacobi’s identity for Poisson brackets.

According to Goldstein1 “there seems to be no simple way of proving Jacobi’s identity for the Poisson bracket without lengthy algebra.” This impression appears to be shared by other authors, who either also explicitly do the lengthy algebra2-5 or leave the tedious work to the reader.6,7 The purpose of this note is to show that, contrary to this widespread belief, there is an extremely short proof of Jacobi’s identity, based on the theory of infinitesimal canonical transformations, with virtually no algebra.

Let $`A(q,p)`$ and $`B(q,p)`$ be any two dynamical variables and consider an infinitesimal canonical transformation generated by $`C(q,p)`$. On the one hand, Goldstein’s Eq.(9-103) with $`u=\{A,B\}`$ yields

$$\delta \{A,B\}=ϵ\{\{A,B\},C\}.$$
$`(1)`$
On the other hand, since the Poisson bracket $`\{A,B\}`$ does not depend on the canonical variables chosen for its computation, its change is due only to the variations of $`A`$ and $`B`$, so that

$$\delta \{A,B\}=\{\delta A,B\}+\{A,\delta B\},$$
$`(2)`$
whence

$$\delta \{A,B\}=ϵ\{\{A,C\},B\}+ϵ\{A,\{B,C\}\}.$$
$`(3)`$
Comparing (1) with (3) and making simple rearrangements one finds

$$\{\{A,B\},C\}+\{\{C,A\},B\}+\{\{B,C\},A\}=0,$$
$`(4)`$
which is Jacobi’s identity.

References

1. H. Goldstein, Classical Mechanics (Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1980), 2nd ed., p. 399.

2. L. A. Pars, A Treatise on Analytical Dynamics (Ox Bow, Woodbridge, CT, 1965), p. 429.

3. F. Gantmacher, Lectures in Analytical Mechanics (Mir, Moscow, 1970), pp. 84-85.

4. E. A. Desloge, Classical Mechanics (Robert E. Krieger, Malabar, FL, 1982), pp. 824-825.

5. F. Scheck, Mechanics $``$ From Newton’s Laws to Deterministic Chaos (Springer, Berlin, 1994), p. 132.

6. D. ter Haar, Elements of Hamiltonian Mechanics (Pergamon, Oxford, 1963), p. 107.

7. N. M. J. Woodhouse, Introduction to Analytical Dynamics (Clarendon, Oxford, 1987), p. 121.


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# Hydrophobic interaction in the liquid phases of globular protein solutions: structure factor parameters

## Abstract

We develop a simple correspondence between hydrophobic surface topology of globular proteins and and an effective protein-protein adhesiveness parameter of the Baxter type. We discuss within this framework analytical interpretation of the structure factor governing static light scattering.

Hydrophobic amino-acid residues exposed at the surface of globular proteins are able to avoid the aqueous environment to an extent by burying themselves in globule-globule contacts. There exists in this sense an effective globule-globule adhesive potential, which, from a thermal perspective, mirrors the strong entropic character of hydrophobicity, driving a general tendency of proteins to cluster with increasing temperature.

In principle, the effect is experimentally accessible via measurement of scattered light intensity at low wavenumber $`qd<<1`$,

$`IcS_0(c),`$

where $`S_0`$ denotes the $`q=0`$ limit of the structure factor, $`c`$ is the protein concentration, and $`d`$ characterises the protein globule lengthscale.

Our objective here is to supplement the usual DLVO interpretation of $`S_0`$ adopted, for example, in recent scattering studies of lysozyme and $`\beta `$-lactoglobulin, with a semi-empirical incorporation of the hydrophobic adhesive mechanism. We do this in the following by first establishing an effective attractive well interaction between proteins, having an explicit temperature dependence derived from thermodynamic data, and then mapping the well interaction onto the adhesiveness parameter of Baxter, this latter being very amenable to liquid state analysis.

The starting point is a formulation of ‘hydrophobic surface tension’ $`\gamma `$ according to a typical transfer free energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }F`$ 2 kcal/mol of a single nonpolar amino-acid residue between water and a hydrophobic environment, i.e.,

$$\gamma =g\mathrm{\Delta }F/a^2$$
(1)
where $`g`$ is some geometrical factor less than one, and $`a1`$nm is a typical residue dimension.

An empirical temperature dependence $`\gamma (T)`$ follows via this expression by extrapolating from room temperature thermodynamic data available for $`\mathrm{\Delta }F`$,

$`\mathrm{\Delta }F(T)=\mathrm{\Delta }H^0+\mathrm{\Delta }C_p(TT_0)T[\mathrm{\Delta }S^0+\mathrm{\Delta }C_p\mathrm{ln}(T/T_0)],`$

where $`\mathrm{\Delta }H^0`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }S^0`$ are respectively the enthalpy and entropy of transfer at temperature $`T_0=298K`$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }C_p`$ is the heat capacity (assumed constant with respect to $`T`$).

Adopting values collated by Dill et al. $`\mathrm{\Delta }H^0=0`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }S^0=6.7`$ cal/K/mol, $`\mathrm{\Delta }C_p=55`$ cal/K/mol, hydrophobic surface tension in this formulation increases up to a maximum at 60-800C, subsequently decreasing as a consequence of the high heat capacity.

Using $`\gamma (T)`$, we can specify an effective hydrophobic contribution to the surface tension at any given globule surface, provided we know the hydrophobic topology of the surface. We will represent hydrophobic surface topology by a factor $`f_h`$ defining the fraction of amino-acid residues at the surface which are hydrophobic as opposed to polar, i.e., the effective hydrophobic surface tension becomes $`f_h\gamma `$.

Surface tension at the globule surfaces does not in itself determine an effective well-depth $`ϵ`$ characterising globule-globule contacts casually formed in solution. We have first to specify the ‘casual’ area of contact $`\delta A`$ to which it is thermodynamically conjugate.

To this end, we minimize the form

$$ϵ=\gamma f_h\delta A+\frac{E}{2\pi d}(\delta A)^2,$$
(2)
where, following earlier work, we interpret the phenomenological parameter $`E`$ 10MPa as an osmotic shear modulus governing globule elasticity, with $`d`$ the globule diameter.

The result is a temperature-dependent well-depth

$$ϵ(T)=\frac{\pi d}{2E}[f_h\gamma (T)]^2$$
(3)
(temperature dependence of $`E`$ is neglected).

Taking the amino-acid lengthscale $`a`$ for the well width, the full potential is

$`v(r,T)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{}0<r<d`$ (6)
$`ϵ(T)d<r<d+a`$
$`0r>d+a,`$
The square-well fluid is not particularly tractable from an equation of state perspective. However, exact and compact analytical results follow in the adhesive limit formulated by Baxter,

$`v(r)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{}0<r<d`$ (9)
$`k_BT\mathrm{ln}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{d+\sigma }{12\tau \sigma }}\right]d<r<d+\sigma `$
$`0r>d+\sigma ,`$
where $`\sigma 0`$.

Baxter’s parameter $`\tau ^1`$ can by regarded as a measure of adhesive strength, as is clear from its relation to the second virial coefficient

$$\mathrm{\Delta }B_2/B_2^{HS}=3d^3\underset{\sigma 0}{lim}_d^{d+\sigma }\left[1\mathrm{exp}(\beta v(r))\right]r^2𝑑r=\tau ^1/4,$$
(10)
where the bare hard-sphere result $`B_2^{HS}=2\pi d^3/3`$ presents a convenient reference.

The idea of exploiting the analytical tractability of the adhesive limit to represent square-well-like systems is a familiar one in the general colloidal context. We follow here the equivalence prescription of Regnaut and Ravey, who fix a correspondence between $`\tau ^1`$ and well-depth by equating the respective second virial coefficients. To lowest order in $`a/d`$ we have for the square-well fluid,

$`\mathrm{\Delta }B_2/B_2^{HS}3(a/d)\left[\mathrm{exp}(\beta ϵ)1\right].`$

Hence,

$$\tau ^1(T)=12(a/d)\left[\mathrm{exp}(\beta ϵ(T))1\right].$$
(11)
Regnaut and Ravey also give the analytical form of the structure factor for Baxter particles,

$$S_0=\frac{(1\phi )^4}{\left[1+2\phi \lambda \phi (1\phi )\right]^2},$$
(12)
where $`\phi =\pi d^3c/6`$ is, in our case, the protein volume fraction, and $`\lambda `$ is the lower root of

$$\frac{\phi }{12}\lambda ^2\left(\frac{\phi }{1\phi }+\tau \right)\lambda +\frac{1+\phi /2}{(1\phi )^2}=0.$$
(13)
Dispersion force and double layer electrostatics can be treated via the $`B_2`$ predictions of DLVO theory (Muschol and Rosenberger give details of the calculation), yielding a final expression

$$(S_0)^1=\frac{\left[1+2\phi \lambda \phi (1\phi )\right]^2}{(1\phi )^4}+2c\mathrm{\Delta }B_2^{\mathrm{DLVO}}+O(c^2).$$
(14)
The double layer contribution might alternatively be replaced by a Donnan-like treatment of the electrostatics, as presented recently by Warren, focusing on the ideal distributional entropy of small ions in the solution. In the absence of salt, the charge per protein, $`Q`$ say, must be balanced according to the charge neutrality constraint by a concentration $`cQ`$ of counterions, generating osmotic pressure

$$v\delta \mathrm{\Pi }/k_BT=\phi Q,$$
(15)
where $`v=\pi d^3/6`$ is the protein specific volume.

Chemical equilibrium with a salt reservoir at concentration $`c_s`$ leads to the modification

$$v\delta \mathrm{\Pi }/k_BT=\sqrt{(\phi Q)^2+(2vc_s)^2}.$$
(16)
Hence, via the fluctuation-dissipation theorem $`S_0=k_BT(\mathrm{\Pi }/c)^1`$, and combining with Eqn (12), we obtain for charged globules in the presence of salt

$$(S_0)^1=\frac{\left[1+2\phi \lambda \phi (1\phi )\right]^2}{(1\phi )^4}+Q\left[1+(2c_s/cQ)^2\right]^{1/2}+2c\mathrm{\Delta }B_2^{\mathrm{Hamaker}}+O(c^2),$$
(17)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_2^{\mathrm{Hamaker}}`$ is the dispersion force contribution. Note that the Donnan contribution to $`B_2`$ follows by comparing the low concentration limit of this expression with $`(S_0)^11+2B_2c`$, yielding $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_2=Q^2/\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4}c_s`$.

This completes our main objective. However, some interesting features in respect of the phase diagram deserve comment. Firstly, there exists for the Baxter system a locus in $`(\phi ,\tau )`$-space along which the structure factor of Eqn (12) diverges, tantamount to a phase transition spinodal (diverging compressibility). This may or may not underpin a liquid-liquid phase separation in the protein solution as represented by Eqn (17), depending on whether $`\lambda `$ of the mapping becomes sufficiently large with respect to the electrostatic term.

Secondly, the ‘connected cluster’ structural view of the Baxter fluid reveals a percolation transition, at which the mean cluster size $`N`$ diverges. Cluster size is formally related to a pair-connectedness function $`P(r)`$ analogous to the usual pair distribution function $`g(r)`$,

$$N=1+cP(r)𝑑𝐫,$$
(18)
where $`c^2P(𝐫_1,𝐫_2)d𝐫_1d𝐫_2`$ is the probability of finding connected particles in volume elements $`d𝐫_1`$ and $`d𝐫_2`$ simultaneously. By recasting Baxter’s original $`g(r)`$ method in connectivity language, Chiew and Glandt solve for $`P(r)`$, yielding

$$N=1/(1\lambda \phi )^2$$
(19)
The percolation transition, i.e. the locus $`\lambda \phi 1`$, is not strongly manifest in extensive thermodynamical quantities, there being no free energy singularity. However, the qualitative trend exhibited via the mapping into $`(\phi ,T)`$-space, percolation at lower volume fraction with increasing temperature (since $`\lambda `$ increases with hydrophobic surface tension $`\gamma `$), is reminiscent of the gelation curve observed experimentally in sickle cell hemoglobin solutions. This resemblance should be qualified by noting that the experimentally referred to ‘gel phase’ of HbS globules comprises an entangled mesh of multi-stranded polymeric assemblages, somewhat removed from the percolation perspective.

It is useful also to stress that clustering is understood here in the Hill sense implicit to the structure of isotropically interacting simple liquids - transient ‘ordinary liquid clusters’ of this type are to be contrasted with transient ‘open clusters’ characteristic of systems in which intermolecular bonding is orientationally constrained (hydrogen bonding in liquid water is the classic example). Open cluster formation, and the attendant prospect of further critical points,  are of course entirely feasible in the case of globular proteins having patch-like hydrophobic surface topology (as opposed to the uniform topology assumed here via our parameter $`f_h`$), presenting a possible avenue for future investigation.

In summary, our main result is Eqn (17) for the static structure factor, in conjunction with the mapping via Eqn (11) of a hydrophobic square-well interaction specified by Eqn (3). As a basis for interpreting experimental light scattering from globular protein solutions, this result is quantitative to the extent that it takes into account (i) dispersion force interactions, (ii) Donnan electrostatics, and (iii) the effective globule-globule adhesive interaction which originates from hydrophobicity on the amino-acid lengthscale.

Of the unspecified parameters $`g`$, $`f_h`$, $`E`$ introduced into the structure factor by the hydrophobic contribution, a simple geometrical argument should suffice in order to fix $`g`$, while $`f_h`$ could be obtained in a first approximation from the sequence information for a given globule, or directly from tertiary structural data. Insofar as we have less insight into the phenomenological elastic modulus $`E`$, a scattering experiment might focus on estimating this quantity.

Finally, a liquid-liquid spinodal and a percolation line are implicit to the general approach. Although such features are expected to fall more or less within the solid-fluid miscibility gap, they are of practical concern to crystallographers and disease pathologists, in their capacity as metastable phenomena capable of breaking up the dispersed sol phase of globules, or obstructing crystallization.


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# A conjecture in the problem of rational definite summation

## 1 The conjecture

Let $`C`$ be a field of characteristic 0, not necessarily algebraically closed. Let $`n,k`$ be variables, and consider the ring $`C(n)[k]`$ of polynomials in $`k`$, whose coefficients are rational functions in $`n`$.

For all $`a,b,c𝐐`$ with $`a0`$ we define the $`C(n)`$-algebra homomorphism

$$\psi _{a,b,c}:C(n)[k]C(n)[k]$$

as follows:

$$\psi _{a,b,c}(k)=ak+bn+c.$$

If $`B_1,B_2`$ are irreducible elements of $`C(n)[k]`$, then we define the following equivalence relation: $`B_1_pB_2`$ if there exist $`a,b,c𝐐`$, with $`a0`$ such that $`\psi _{a,b,c}(B_1)=sB_2`$ for some unit $`s`$ (i.e. $`s`$ is a nonzero element of $`C(n)`$).

Let $`FC(n,k)`$ be a nonzero rational function in $`n`$ and $`k`$. The partial fraction decomposition of $`F=F(n,k)`$ over $`C(n)`$ has the following form:

$$F=Q+F_1+\mathrm{}+F_t$$

where $`QC(n)[k]`$, and each $`F_i`$ is a partial fraction term which means the following: there exist a positive integer $`d_i`$, non-zero $`A_i,B_iC(n)[k]`$ with $`\mathrm{degree}_k(A_i)<\mathrm{degree}_k(B_i)`$, with $`B_i`$ irreducible, such that

$$F_i=A_i/B_{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{d_i}.$$

We call two partial-fraction-terms $`F_i`$ and $`F_j`$ equivalent $`F_iF_j`$ when

$$d_i=d_j\mathrm{and}B_i_pB_j.$$

Suppose that there are $`u`$ distinct equivalence classes among $`F_1,\mathrm{},F_t`$, and number these equivalence classes $`1,\mathrm{},u`$. Let $`G_i`$ be the sum of all $`F_j`$ in the $`i`$’th equivalence class. So we can write

$$F=Q+G_1+\mathrm{}G_u.$$

Now $`_{k=0}^nF(n,k)`$ is a function in just one variable $`n`$. This function is only defined for nonnegative integers $`n`$ for which the denominator of $`F(n,k)`$ does not vanish for any $`k\{0,1,\mathrm{},n\}`$. Now assume that this is the case for $`n0`$.

The question now is: Under this assumption, how to decide if this function $`_{k=0}^nF`$ is a rational function? More precisely: is there a rational function $`R(n)C(n)`$ that takes the same values as $`_{k=0}^nF`$ whenever both are defined?
Conjecture: If $`_{k=0}^nF`$ is a rational function, then so is $`_{k=0}^nG_i`$ for every $`i\{1,\mathrm{},u\}`$.

The conjecture says that the problem of deciding if $`_{k=0}^nF`$ is a rational function (and if so, finding that rational function) can be reduced to the same question for the $`_{k=0}^nG_i`$. This reduces the rational summation problem to a set of smaller summation problems $`_{k=0}^nG_i`$, each of which involves only one equivalence class of partial-fraction-terms.

## 2 A few remarks

Let $`B`$ be an irreducible element of $`C(n)[k]`$. Define $`\mathrm{Aut}(B)`$ as the set of all $`\psi _{a,b,c}`$ with $`a,b,c𝐐`$, $`a0`$, such that $`\psi _{a,b,c}(B)=sB`$ for some unit $`s`$. It is easy to see that $`\mathrm{Aut}(B)`$ is a group under composition, and that the map

$$\pi :\mathrm{Aut}(B)𝐐^{}$$

sending $`\psi _{a,b,c}`$ to $`a`$ is an injective group homomorphism. From this it follows that $`\mathrm{Aut}(B)`$ has either 1, 2, or $`\mathrm{}`$ many elements. We call $`B`$ of generic type if $`\mathrm{Aut}(B)`$ has 1 element, symmetric type if $`\mathrm{Aut}(B)`$ has 2 elements, and rational type if $`\mathrm{Aut}(B)`$ has $`\mathrm{}`$ many elements. Note that $`B`$ is of rational type if and only if $`B_pk`$.

$`G_i`$ is a sum of equivalent terms $`A_j/B_{j}^{}{}_{}{}^{d_j}`$. We call $`G_i`$ of generic, symmetric, resp. rational type if the $`B_j`$ appearing in $`G_i`$ are of generic, symmetric, resp. rational type. In order to calculate $`_{k=0}^nG_i`$ it helps to distinguish these three types. The rational type allows more kinds of cancelations among equivalent terms $`A_j/B_{j}^{}{}_{}{}^{d_j}`$ than the symmetric type, which in turn allows more kinds of cancelations than the generic type. We give an example of cancelation for the generic type: Let $`B(n,k)`$ be an arbitrary irreducible polynomial. For example, $`B(n,k)=k^3+kn+1`$. Consider:

$$\frac{1}{B(n,k)}\frac{1}{B(n,nk)}$$
(1)
or

$$\frac{1}{B(n,k)}+\frac{1}{B(n,k+n+1)}\frac{1}{B(n,2k)}\frac{1}{B(n,2k+1)}.$$
(2)
These are non-zero rational functions, whose $`_{k=0}^n`$ is $`0`$. The algorithm in  would detect cancelations like the one in equation (1) but not cancelations like the one in (2). This problem was the starting point for this paper.

The rational and symmetric types allow additional kinds of cancelation. Here is an example for the rational type:

$$1/(k+1)+2/(k+2+n)2/(2k+1)$$

has sum 0 because it can be rewritten as

$$2/(k+1)+2/(k+2+n)2/(2k+1)2/(2k+2).$$

We can give examples where the sum is a non-zero rational function by modifying the above examples in such a way that all but a constant number of terms cancel. For example, the sum of:

$$1/(k+3)+2/(k+2+n)2/(2k+1)$$
(3)
differs from the sum of $`1/(k+1)+2/(k+2+n)2/(2k+1)`$ (which was 0) by $`D=1/(n+3)+1/(n1+3)1/(0+1)1/(1+1)`$. To develop an algorithm for rational definite summation, one must identify all possible cancelations and write procedures for each of them. Then, for inputs such as (3), the algorithm must determine if this input can be modified into something that has sum 0, and if so, calculate the difference $`D`$ like in the example. One could then try to prove that the algorithm completely solves the problem, that it determines for $`FC(n,k)`$ if $`_{k=0}^nF`$ is a rational function or not, and if so, finds that rational function. For a preliminary implementation of this algorithm, see:
http://www.math.fsu.edu/$`\stackrel{~}{\text{ }}`$hoeij/SumRat/
It implements several kinds of cancelations. It is not clear (even if one assumes the conjecture) if this algorithm is complete or not.

A second question: Suppose that the denominator of $`F`$ has no irreducible factors $`BC[n,k]`$ for which there exists $`PC[k]`$ with $`B_pP`$. Suppose furthermore that $`R(n):=_{k=0}^nF(n,k)`$ satisfies a linear recurrence relation $`_{i=0}^ma_i(n)R(n+i)=0`$ for some polynomials $`a_i(n)C[n]`$, not all zero. Does it then follow that $`R(n)`$ is a rational function?

## 3 An example

Let

$$B:=k+n(n+1)/2,F:=1/B,R(n):=\underset{k=0}{\overset{n}{}}F\mathrm{where}n>0.$$

Then $`R(n)`$ does not satisfy a linear recurrence with polynomial coefficients.

Proof: Suppose that $`m`$ is a positive integer and that $`a_0(n),\mathrm{},a_m(n)`$ are in $`𝐙[n]`$ such that $`_{i=0}^ma_i(n)R(n+i)`$ is identically 0.

Let $`S_n`$ be the set $`\{n(n+1)/2,1+n(n+1)/2,\mathrm{},n+n(n+1)/2\}`$, so $`R(n)=_{iS_n}1/i`$. Let $`A_n,B_n`$ be positive integers, with $`A_n/B_n=R(n)`$ and $`\mathrm{gcd}(A_n,B_n)=1`$. The sets $`S_1,S_2,\mathrm{}`$ are disjoint and their union is the set of all positive integers. Define $`p_n`$ as the product of all prime numbers in $`S_n`$. For $`0<i<n`$, these primes are larger than $`\mathrm{max}(S_i)`$, so $`\mathrm{gcd}(p_n,B_i)=1`$.

Assume that $`a_0(n),\mathrm{},a_m(n)𝐙[n]`$, and that $`a_m(n)`$ is not identically zero. Then there exists an integer $`n_1`$ such that $`a_m(n)0`$ for all $`n>n_1`$. If $`_{i=0}^ma_i(n)R(n+i)=0`$ then $`a_m(n)`$ must be divisible by $`p_{m+n}`$ because the factors of $`p_{m+n}`$ appear in the denominator of $`R(m+n)`$ but not in the denominators of $`R(n),R(n+1),\mathrm{},R(m1+n)`$. Hence $`p_{m+n}|a_m(n)|`$. Since each prime factor in $`p_{m+n}`$ is $`>\frac{1}{2}n^2`$ we see that the number of primes in $`S_{m+n}`$ is at most $`\mathrm{ln}(|a_m(n)|)/\mathrm{ln}(\frac{1}{2}n^2)`$, which tends to $`\mathrm{degree}(a_m)/2`$ for large $`n`$. This means that the density of primes in $`S_n`$ is much less than $`1/\mathrm{ln}(\mathrm{max}(S_n))`$, contradicting the prime number theorem (note that $`S_1,S_2,\mathrm{}`$ are disjoint and their union is the set of all positive integers).

One sees by induction that $`a_{m1},\mathrm{},a_0`$ must be identically 0 as well. So $`R(n)`$ does not satisfy any nonzero linear recurrence relation over $`𝐙[n]`$. There can not exist a recurrence relation over $`𝐂[n]`$ either, because if $`K𝐂`$ is the coefficient field of such a recurrence relation, then one can reduce the transcendence degree of the finitely generated field $`K`$ by switching to a residue field of a valuation. After finitely many steps, we may assume that the transcendence degree is 0, so $`K`$ is a number field, Then one can multiply the recurrence by an element of $`K`$ in order to create at least one polynomial $`a_i(n)`$ with leading coefficient 1. Then, after taking the trace over the field of rational numbers, one obtains a nonzero recurrence over $`𝐐[n]`$, and by multiplying out the denominators one obtains a recurrence over $`𝐙[n]`$.
Hopefully primes (or prime ideals) could be used for the conjecture as well.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Sergei Abramov, Ha Le, Sergei Tsarev and Eugene Zima for discussions on these topics.


text: # 1 General information about experiment


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# The USNO-B Catalog

## 1 Introduction

The USNO-B catalog, currently released in version 1.0, is compiled from the digitization of various photographic sky survey plates by the Precision Measuring Machine (PMM) located at the U. S. Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station (USNOFS). The PMM produces both a pixel archive and a list of detections for each plate in real time. The plate material includes five complete coverages of the Northern sky and four of the Southern sky, and contains a mixture of colors and epochs. The catalog was compiled from the merged lists of detections, and presents position, proper motion, magnitudes in various colors, star-galaxy classification, and various uncertainty estimators for 1,042,618,261 distinct objects. A discussion of the technical details is presented in the documentation associated with the catalog, and like the catalog is not being submitted for publication in a journal. The digital distribution can be found at http://www.nofs.navy.mil and other sites.

USNO-B is the next step in the sequence of catalogs that started with UJ1.0 (Monet et al. 1994), USNO-A1.0 (Monet et al. 1996) and USNO-A2.0 (Monet et al. 1998). In simple terms, USNO-A was a 2-color, 1-epoch catalog while USNO-B is a 3-color, 2-epoch catalog. This statement, like most generalities about these catalogs, is incorrect. The southern surveys that were part of USNO-A were taken at 2 epochs, and there is no first epoch blue survey south of $`\delta =33\mathrm{°}`$ to include in USNO-B. For both catalogs, an object must be detected on two different surveys to be included in the catalog since isolated, single survey detections are unreliable. For USNO-A, this meant that the object must have detectable red and blue fluxes, and this led to the exclusion of many faint objects with non-neutral colors. Also, the epoch difference in the southern surveys meant that objects with larger proper motions tended to be excluded. USNO-B attempts to fix both of these problems. An object detected on the same color survey at two epochs will be included in USNO-B as will objects which have significant proper motions, although it is still the case that objects with large motions and extreme colors may be omitted. The selection algorithm requires that spatially coincident detections must be made on any two of the surveys for an object to be classified as real and be included in the catalog.

## 2 Plate Material

Even in these modern times, one cannot help but be impressed by the effort and dedication put into the photographic sky surveys. A useful overview was presented by Morgan et al. (1992), and Table 1 presents the general properties of the surveys incorporated into the USNO-B catalog. The following details are of general interest, but the rest are relegated to the documentation associated with the digital version of the catalog.

> In perhaps 20 cases, the original plate (mostly in POSS-I) has disappeared and cannot be found. In these cases, the glass copy was scanned.

> It appears to take about 15 years to complete a photographic survey. The epoch for a particular field can be quite different from the mean epoch, and this difference can be quite important in the measurement of stellar proper motions.

> The total number of plates included in USNO-B1.0 is 7,435. The missing fields are numbers 1 and 646 in the SERC-I survey. These were not available in time for this release, but will be included in later releases.

> In our notation, there are 937 POSS-I fields. The centers for fields 1 and 2 and for fields 723 and 724 are the same. Both fields 1 and 2 are included since they were taken at very different hour angles (they are at the North celestial pole), but field 723 was omitted since 724 was published in the atlas. Because of these degeneracies, different numbering schemes have been used over the years, and some confusion persists.

> The plates involved in USNO-B are about 60% of the Schmidt plates scanned by the PMM. Data from the other plates (rejected, Luyten’s, etc.) will be included in future USNO catalogs.

## 3 Scanning Procedure

PMM differs from most other astronomical plate scanners because it uses a 2-dimensional charge coupled device (CCD) camera as its sensor. A Schmidt plate is digitized in 588 separate exposures, and each produces a 1312 by 1032 image digitized with 8-bit resolution. The CCDs have 6.8 by 6.8 micron pixels, a 100% fill factor, and are read at 10 million pixels per second. A complete exposure cycle takes about 0.5 seconds including the shutter operation and integration times. A lens provides 2:1 imaging of the CCD on the focal plane. Using a nominal plate scale of 67 arcseconds per millimeter, the pixels are about 0.9 arcseconds in size, the field of view is about 20 by 15 arcminutes, and spacing between exposures is about 18 by 13 arcminutes. PMM has two CCD camera systems, but mechanical limitations restrict parallel operations to about 60% of each plate.

PMM is also different from other scanners because all image processing is done in real time. Each CCD is connected to a computer by an optical fiber and a DMA interface, and each frame is fully archived and processed before the next is taken. The processing is quite complicated, a detailed description (including source code) is included in the USNO-B documentation, but the following gives the major steps. After the data arrive in physical memory, the process forks and one path writes the raw data to magnetic tape and then exits. The processing path starts with bias removal, flat field correction, and an object finder. Each object is processed in steps of increasing precision, but the processing of each object is independent of all others. This independence enables the usage of parallel processing by the four CPUs in each computer, and was a necessary simplification given the computers available in the early 1990s. Table 2 lists all of the parameters computed for each object in every frame. This rich parameter set obviates the need to make a “star” or “galaxy” decision in real time. Once the entire plate has been scanned, the list of object parameters is flushed first to disk, and then (offline) to CD-ROM. All data in the USNO-B catalog come from these files, and the lookback index given for each detection in the catalog allows all quantities to be recovered from the database.

Perhaps the only portion of the algorithm worthy of comment here is the one used to compute the image position. The image data are 8-bits in transmission, and by measuring photographic negatives, the sky is bright and the images are faint. Since most of the survey plates are lacking density calibration spots or wedges, and because the scattered light in the images is small (perhaps 0.5%) but significant, the choice was made to omit a density-to-intensity calibration, and to deal with the images in transmitted light. All of these effects increase the already noisy nature of the photographic emulsion, and tests showed that a least squares estimator was necessary. In the faint limit, stars look something like a Gaussian, but they have flat cores and wide wings when saturated. The choice was made to use the function

$$T(x,y)=B+\frac{A}{e^{\alpha (r^2r_0^2)}+1}$$
(1)
where $`r^2=(xx_0)^2+(yy_0)^2`$. The six free parameters are $`A`$ (central amplitude), $`B`$ (background), $`x_0`$, $`y_0`$ (position), $`r_0^2`$ (saturation radius), and $`\alpha `$ (extent of image wings). Extensive testing indicated that this symmetric version provided a more stable estimate of the image position than the somewhat better fitting function that includes a seventh free parameter for asymmetry. Traditional non-linear least squares based on Marquardt’s algorithm (Bevington 1969) was used. Iteration was terminated after three steps, regardless of convergence: testing showed that good images were fit immediately, and that bad images never found a good fit.

The plate scanning sequence was developed during the testing phase of the PMM program. The first step was to do test exposures and adjust the neutral density filters in the illumination beam to compensate for the background diffuse density of the plate. This was needed because some plates were almost clear while others were almost black. Next, the spatial scanning pattern was done without using the imaging cameras, but while using laser micrometers to measure the distance from the camera to the emulsion. This was needed because plates sagged in the platens, the platens sagged, and because some plates had significant ripples in the glass. Once a 2-dimensional map of the plate surface was measured, a low-order polynomial was fit to produce the map that was used during the scanning to keep the CCD a constant distance from the plate. The third step was to focus the cameras by maximizing the sky granularity in the image. The combination of the nominal focus, the map of the plate surface, and the compensation for the background density allowed the scan to commence. Each vision system had an independent prescan sequence, but the scanning of the plates used both cameras whenever possible.

Each platen holds four plates, and typical, out of the Galactic plane plates took about an hour to scan and produced about 200,000 detections. The slowest plates were in the region of Baade’s window, took about seven hours to scan, and produced more than 7,000,000 detections. PMM has two platens, and barcodes were placed on all platens, plate envelopes, and magnetic tapes to minimize bookkeeping errors. The hardware and software were frozen at the start of production-mode scanning (1994.7), and it took about $`2\times 10^8`$ seconds (1994.7 to 2001.2) to process essentially all of the almost 19,000 plates involved. About $`19\times 10^{12}`$ pixels were processed (100,000 pixels per second) and about $`15\times 10^9`$ detections were logged (75 detections per second). PMM now sits idle.

## 4 Astrometric Calibration

The first step of the calibration takes the pixel coordinates computed in each of the 588 exposures needed to scan a plate, combines them with the metrology of the PMM platen, and produces a catalog of positions in PMM focal plane coordinates (integer $`1\times 10^8`$ meters). It turned out that the elaborate pre-scan efforts to determine proper focus were not accurate enough, so a numerical refocusing algorithm was developed. This adjusted the coordinates computed in each exposure so as to maximize the number of overlapping frame multiple detections and to minimize the dispersion in their mean positions. The revision to the focus computed by this algorithm was typically smaller than the focal depth of the camera, but occasionally a plate was found wherein the real time focus was significantly in error.

The second step was to compute a catalog of astrometric standards for each plate. To the extent enabled by the SLALIB software package (Wallace 1994), the coordinates of stars in this catalog are the apparent position of the star on an idealized Schmidt plate given the circumstances of the observation. The catalog of PMM measures was correlated with these standards, and a cubic transformation was computed.

As is well known, the combination of the Schmidt telescope and the photographic emulsion suffers from large astrometric errors as a function of magnitude. One of the problems with the astrometry presented in USNO-A is that it used the faintest Tycho-2 stars (Høg et al. 2000) as its astrometric calibrators. While this was the best that could be done at the time, all of these stars are in deep saturation on the survey plates. Hence, the astrometry of faint, unsaturated stars suffered from field-dependent effects that were suspected but uncharacterized at the time USNO-A was compiled. A different strategy was employed for USNO-B. As part of the PMM program, the Northern Proper Motion plates (Klemola et al. 1987) and the Southern Proper Motion plates (Platais et al. 1998) were scanned, and an astrometric catalog called YS4.0 was compiled (Monet in prep.). The limiting magnitude of YS4.0 is about $`V=18`$, and these stars are not saturated on the Schmidt survey plates. The advantage of this strategy is that the astrometric calibration avoids saturated stars. The disadvantage is that the mean epoch of YS4.0 is about 1975, and the mean motion between YS4.0 and the Schmidt surveys was set to zero by the least squares solution. Hence, the proper motions in USNO-B are relative, not absolute, and future releases of USNO-B will attempt to remove this bias through the introduction of a statistical model.

The first iteration of the astrometric algorithm assumed only a cubic relationship between the plate coordinates and the astrometric standards. Once all of the plates were processed, the astrometric residuals were co-added as a function of position in the focal plane, and the systematic, fixed pattern of astrometric residuals was computed. This was done independently for each survey, and solutions were done as a function of magnitude and declination. (Declination is a surrogate for zenith distance since most plates were taken near the meridian.) No obvious correlations with declination were seen, but very large terms and differences in terms were found as a function of magnitude. All of these maps are included in the documentation associated with the digital version of USNO-B, but Figure 1 shows typical maps (POSS-I 103a-O survey at internal PMM magnitudes of $`m=10`$ and $`m=18`$). For USNO-B, separate maps were used for each survey at each integer internal magnitude between 10 and 19. The map for $`m=10`$ was used at all internal magnitudes brighter than 10, and that for $`m=19`$ was used for all magnitudes fainter than 19.

Given the maps of fixed pattern astrometric error, the astrometric solution pipeline was rerun, the maps were included, and the cubic mapping between plate and catalog coordinates was recomputed. Finally, all measures were transformed from plate coordinates to sky coordinates to produce plate-by-plate catalogs of J2000 coordinates at the epoch that the plate was taken.

Although a more thorough analysis of the astrometric accuracy of the USNO-B catalog is planned, a coarse estimate can be obtained from the dispersion of the fits for the individual observations (items Q and R in Table 3). An analysis of the subset of objects with all possible detections (i.e., 4 in the South and 5 in the North; about 40% of all objects in USNO-B) shows that the median dispersion is about 0.12 arcsec in both $`X`$ and $`Y`$. This is an approximate value, and it ignores possible systematic components arising from position on the plate, brightness of the image, or other effects. Users should remember that some USNO-B objects with large astrometric uncertainty may be erroneous combinations of observations of different objects, that the uncertainty in the predicted position of an object increases with time since the mean epoch (often in the 1970s), and that usage of this estimated accuracy should not replace a computation for each object using the values listed in the catalog and the desired epoch of observation.

## 5 Photometric Calibration

The photometric calibration of the USNO-B catalog is of marginal quality, and will be revised as the appropriate data become available. The root of the problem is that an all-sky catalog of faint photometric standards does not exist. Because of this, a 2-step photometric calibration strategy was adopted. The first step was to calibrate the bright stars on all the plates. Tycho-2 stars are almost all brighter than $`V=13`$, and although the images are grossly saturated, an almost linear relationship exists between the internal magnitudes measured by the PMM and values computed from spectral energy distributions and the $`(B,V)`$ magnitudes listed in the catalog. Details of the modeling are presented in the documentation accompanying the digital version of the USNO-B catalog, and Henden’s file tables.txt contains the results. Since Tycho-2 stars are measured on all plates, the bright star fit was extrapolated and applied to all PMM measures from that plate.

The remaining task was to compute the systematic differences between the true calibration for faint stars and the extrapolation of the bright star fit. Two sources of photometry for faint stars (magnitudes from 14 to 22) were used, the Guide Star Photometric Catalog 2 (Bucciarelli et al. 2001) and the photometric data measured for the USNOFS CCD parallax program (Monet et al. 1992). Henden’s tables were used to convert between the standard system magnitudes and the photographic magnitudes, and the combination of these two catalogs provided faint standards on 3,281 plates, or about 44% of the total needed. Polynomial fits (linear or cubic as necessary) were computed, and the calibrated magnitudes for all objects were obtained.

For the remaining 56% of the plates without faint photometric calibrators, the calibration was computed from the plate overlap zones. The plates adjacent to an uncalibrated plate were searched, and if any had a faint calibration, then it was identified as a possible calibrator, and the distance between plate centers was tallied. After searching all nearby plates, the closest one was found and if there were more than 500 objects in common, a calibration was computed. There were 3,517 (about 47%) uncalibrated plates that were adjacent to calibrated plates, but three more steps were needed to complete the calibration of all plates. No analysis of all possible overlap regions was done, and this is an area wherein improvements are anticipated in future releases of USNO-B.

It is difficult to give a single number for the photometric accuracy of USNO-B, but the solution combining all 632,827 calibration stars spread over 3,281 plates has a standard deviation of 0.25 magnitudes. This value includes whatever effects might arise from the transformation of $`(B,V,R,I)`$ to $`(O,E,J,F,N)`$ colors, but a similar value is found for each of the ten different surveys taken separately. Many plates, particularly those calibrated with the photometry from the USNOFS parallax program, show substantially smaller errors, and solutions for plates without photometric calibrators may be worse.

Another major problem with USNO-B photometry is that a separate calibration for the photometry of extended objects was not done. In part, this is due to the relatively few catalogs of galaxy photometry. Another factor is that the transformation from magnitudes in a standard system to those in the photographic bandpasses is even less well determined than for stars. The final reason was that the photometric response of the plates is quite non-linear, and no attempt was made to compute the transformation between the observed values of transmitted light and the true intensity incident on the plate. Whereas the photometry of stars may be useful, the USNO-B magnitudes for non-stellar objects are qualitative, at best.

## 6 Star/Galaxy Separation

Although commonly called star/galaxy separation, the value presented in USNO-B is a measure of the similarity of the unknown object to a stellar point spread function (PSF). Most objects that are dissimilar to the PSF are galaxies, but many other types of astronomical objects and photographic artifacts can produce objects in the catalog. Since the measured transmission was not converted to a true intensity, and because the photographic process is inherently non-linear, the stellar PSF varies with apparent brightness and position in the focal plane.

The method used to distinguish stars from nonstellar objects was an oblique decision tree with three nodes. Each node of the decision tree is a plane defined by values of two image description parameters, and six (not necessarily distinct) image parameters are needed to define this tree. A decision tree must be trained on a set of objects of known type (star or galaxy). The training set in the Northern sky was chosen to be the plates containing the Coma cluster of galaxies. The training set was compiled by hand by examining KPNO 4-m CCD frames of the Coma cluster taken in good seeing by Secker (1997). The catalog of Coma cluster galaxies by Godwin, Metcalfe, & Peach (1983) was also consulted. Because of the non-linearities in the image in transmitted light, each interval of one internal magnitude was searched for the set of six image description parameters that provided best star/nonstar discrimination out of the entire set (see Table 2).

Once the training plate of each Northern survey was calibrated, the edges of the stellar ridge lines of the various image parameters were identified in five annular zones centered on the plate center. For each of the other plates in the survey, the stellar ridge lines of the relevant parameters were mapped (shift and stretch only) to those of the training plate zone by zone, and the classification index was computed for each object. The calibration of the Southern sky was done in a similar manner, but the training set was taken to be a particularly good plate in the equatorial overlap zone, and truth was taken to be the classification from the Northern plates. The largest source of classification error is the inability to match the stellar ridge line on a given plate to that on the training plate.

The classifier produces an integer in the range $`(011)`$ that measures the similarity of the unknown object to a stellar PSF. Values of $`(03)`$ are probably non-stellar, and values of $`(811)`$ are probably stellar. The catalog gives the individual classifications from all surveys other than those taken on IV-N emulsions (see Table 3 Bytes 20–39). Various internal tests suggest that the classifier is correct about 85% of the time for objects with internal magnitudes 14–20, but a thorough discussion of the classifier, estimates for its accuracy, and a suggested algorithm for combining the individual estimators for a single object will be given by Canzian et al. (in prep.)

## 7 Catalog Compilation

The first phase of the compilation of the final catalog is to apply the astrometric and photometric calibrations to the raw files produced by the PMM in real time. The second phase is to go from a plate-based approach to files having a constant width in South Polar Distance (SPD $`=\delta +90\mathrm{°}`$). It would have been nice to have preserved the 7.5-degree width used in the USNO-A catalog, but the size of USNO-B required using a width of 0.1 degrees. The 7,435 plate files are written into 1,800 SPD files, and then each SPD file is sorted on right ascension. The third phase is to examine the SPD files so that the ensemble of individual observations is reformatted into a list of objects with from one to five observations per object. This task is difficult because there are different numbers of surveys as a function of SPD, there can be duplicate detections of the same object if it fell in a plate overlap zone, and the epoch difference between plates is highly variable. The current algorithm was the following, but modifications may be needed in future releases of USNO-B.

> The first step is to find objects that do not move. A 3.0 arcsecond aperture is moved through the observation file for a single band of SPD, and an object is sensed when one or more observations are found within the aperture. The list of observations is examined, culled, and all single observation objects are ignored. If the object contains observations from one or more first epoch and one or more second epoch surveys (see Table 1 for assignments), then the object is tallied and the individual observations are removed from further consideration.

> The second step is to look for objects with significant proper motions that were observed at all available epochs. The list of objects is recomputed, omitting those that were flagged as no-motion objects, but with the aperture of 30 arcseconds. For each object, all combinations of second epoch observations are fit for linear motion. If significant, the fit is extrapolated to the first epoch survey(s), and a search is made for detections inside the error ellipse(s). All possible combinations are pursued. If the fit includes all available surveys, has a standard deviation less than 0.4 arcseconds in the tangent plane coordinates $`\xi `$ and $`\eta `$, and has a motion less than 10 (5 observations), 3 (4 observations), or 1 (3 observations) arcseconds per year, the detection is tallied and the observations are removed from further consideration.

> The third step is to collect reasonable combinations of the remaining detections into objects. The object aperture is set to 20 arcseconds, and all possible combinations of 5-, 4-, 3-, and 2-survey objects are evaluated in that order. The first collection of observations that has a standard deviation less than 5 arcseconds in both $`\xi `$ and $`\eta `$ is called an object, the object is tallied, and the observations are removed from further consideration. Only a few percent of the objects in the USNO-B catalog come from this step, and the uncertainty estimators in the catalog should be sufficient to identify them.

> In all cases, the combination of individual observations into a single object with proper motion was made without any reference to the individual magnitudes. Since more than 200 billion possible combinations were considered, there may be spurious merges in the catalog. For many applications, a test on the individual magnitudes can be used to identify catalog entires that may be erroneous combinations of different objects.

> The final step is to remove double detections and to replace bright stars. Double detections occur because the zones of SPD used during the compilation are somewhat wider than 0.1 degrees to allow for edge effects. King and Raff (1977) give values for the relationship between image diameter and apparent magnitude on POSS-I plates. Mean values were used for all surveys to remove all PMM detections near Tycho-2 stars since the PMM’s measures are usually confused by the gross saturation, diffraction spikes, and halos. After removing the PMM detections, the reformatted Tycho-2 entry is inserted for completeness.

Table 3 gives the data contained in USNO-B for each object. The catalog is organized into 1,800 zones of SPD each exactly 0.1 degrees in width, and the objects are sorted by right ascension in each zone. In addition, accelerator files for each zone contain the first entry and number of entries at each increment of 15 minutes of right ascension. As was found with USNO-A, these files increase the efficiency of catalog access. Users who need a more detailed description are urged to read the documentation and the source code distributed with the catalog. The overriding concerns were to include as many objects as is reasonable (since the alternative is to omit the associated detections), and to require spatially correlated detections on any two or more surveys (even if the combinations may seem curious). At USNOFS, the list of remaining observations has been saved, and will be served to users upon special request.

## 8 Comparison with the SDSS Early Data Release

In an effort to substantiate the internal uncertainty estimators, the $`450`$ square degrees of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release (SDSS EDR; Stoughton et al. 2002) were correlated with USNO-B1.0. The SDSS results are based on CCD data, and have substantially smaller uncertainties than the observations from which USNO-B was compiled. The astrometric comparison for objects determined by SDSS to be unblended and in the magnitude range of $`17<g^{}<19`$ shows a dispersion of about 0.13 arcseconds for stars and 0.20 arcseconds for galaxies. Unfortunately, systematic offsets as large as 0.25 arcseconds were found, and these are taken as evidence for distortions of the USNO-B1.0 astrometric calibration. Comparison of the stellar photometry in the magnitude range of 15 to 21 yields the following transformations and dispersions.

$`O=g^{}+0.08+0.452(g^{}r^{}),\sigma =0.34,`$ (2a)
$`E=r^{}0.200.086(g^{}r^{}),\sigma =0.30,`$ (2b)
$`J=g^{}+0.06+0.079(g^{}r^{}),\sigma =0.33,`$ (2c)
$`F=r^{}0.090.109(g^{}r^{}),\sigma =0.26,`$ (2d)
$`N=i^{}0.440.164(r^{}i^{}),\sigma =0.31`$ (2e)
These relations are determined from the 34 POSS-I fields and the 40 POSS-II fields that are covered by the SDSS EDR, so represent only a small fraction of the USNO-B catalog. Examination of the residuals from these relations suggests that there are additional systematic errors that depend on magnitude, up to 0.15 mag, and that vary from plate to plate, up to 0.2 mag for red plates and somewhat worse for blue plates. Little systematic variation ($``$0.1 mag) is seen with distance from the center of a plate.

Figure 2 displays the fraction of SDSS objects with matching USNO-B entries (within a radius of 1 arcsec, after applying USNO-B proper motions to convert USNO-B positions to the epoch of the SDSS observations) as a function of SDSS $`g^{}`$ magnitude. USNO-B is essentially 100% complete for stars determined to be unblended with other objects by SDSS, but the completeness drops to about 97% when all SDSS objects are considered. This is yet more evidence that CCD data are far superior for image deconvolution than those obtained from photographic plates. USNO-B is roughly 92% complete for unblended SDSS galaxies with $`g^{}<19.5`$. Table 4 shows the correlation between USNO-B and SDSS classifications as a function of SDSS $`g^{}`$ magnitude. These accuracies are nominal since accuracy variations exist from plate to plate and magnitude interval to magnitude interval on a given plate.

## 9 Caveats and Conclusions

USNO-B is a work in progress, and the version 1.0 public release is a compromise between the needs of the community and the development and testing of the catalog compilation software. There are systematic errors and other problems, and future revisions will attempt to address these. Due to its size, human verification of every entry cannot be done. Many of the verification algorithms are statistical in nature, and this leaves open the possibility for small and large errors in specific areas. The following, incomplete list of caveats should serve as a warning to the users of the catalog of the types of difficulties encountered, and the need for skepticism in believing the attributes of peculiar entries.

> The photometric calibration is preliminary. Only 44% of the fields have faint calibrators somewhere on the plate, and in many cases there are only a very few of these. There is no separate calibration of the magnitudes of non-stellar objects, so these should be treated as qualitative measures. The catalog presents magnitudes in the photographic systems $`(O,E,J,F,N)`$ and not on standard systems to minimize uncertainties and the chances for systematic errors. A vignetting function for the Schmidt telescopes has not been studied beyond the preliminary tests that showed that it was probably unimportant. Photometry is probably the weakest aspect of USNO-B, and will be the subject of the most work in the future.

> Please do not ignore the proper motions. The catalog lists the positions for objects in J2000 at the epoch 2000.0, and in many cases this epoch is more than 25 years away from the mean epoch of the observations. Errors in the proper motion, or errors in assigning particular observations to the same object that give rise to spurious proper motions produce catalog positions for patches of empty sky. If you wish to ignore the true proper motion, you should use the catalog motions to compute the position at the mean epoch and use this position instead of the 2000.0 position. This is particularly important for objects with large proper motions ($`\mu 1.0`$ aresec/year). The epoch difference of the plate material in a single field can often be as large as 50 years. Allowing the software to use a large search radius greatly increases the probability for spurious detections, but limiting the search radius to a small value will remove all real high proper motion objects from the catalog. Users should understand that the reality of grouping observations into a single object with high proper motion is a strong function of the number and epoch of the individual observations. Extreme caution is suggested for all such objects, particularly those that are missing one or more opportunities for detection due to faint magnitude or extreme color.

> USNO-B presents relative, not absolute, proper motions. The calibration process described above sets the mean motion of all objects correlated with entries in the YS4.0 catalog to be zero. Since least squares was used, the solution is dominated by large numbers of faint stars, and it is believed that the mean correlated star is between yellow magnitudes of 17 and 18. Whereas this motion may be small in absolute terms, it may be significant in various statistical studies. Future releases of USNO-B will attempt to minimize or remove this bias.

> USNO-B covers the entire sky, and users should understand that there are many areas of the sky that do not resemble sparse, high Galactic latitude fields where objects are isolated and the sky is well defined. In dense fields, the sky is only poorly determined, and PMM often counted more than 5 million distinct objects on a Schmidt plate. Users should understand that photographic photometry and astrometry are not well defined in such regions, nor are they well defined in regions of nebulosity, well-resolved objects like globular clusters and bright galaxies, and around bright stars. The “any 2” rule for merging observations from individual surveys into objects arose from the desire to retain faint blue or faint red objects that were omitted from USNO-A, but the penalty is to increase the probability of false objects in peculiar regions of sky. USNO-B data should not be used for the study of such regions: 67 arcsec/mm is a very coarse scale, the dynamic range of plates is limited, and PSF reconstruction with multi-PSF image deconvolution was not done. Again, this catalog is based on photographic data, and these are of lower quality than those that are familiar to younger astronomers.

> Please do not use USNO-B as a source of data for bright stars. For the sake of completeness and the minimization of confusion, holes were cut around Tycho-2 stars and the Tycho-2 data were copied into the catalog. The original Tycho-2 data should be used for all critical applications. Stars within a few magnitudes of the Tycho-2 limiting magnitude are saturated on the Schmidt plates, and astrometric and photometric values are of lower accuracy.

USNO-B is one of the few attempts to digitize, process, and analyze the entire sky as seen in different optical colors and at different epochs, and it contains successes and failures. It is an all-sky catalog of positions, proper motions, magnitudes, and classifications for more than a billion objects, and its accuracy is about 0.2 arcseconds for astrometry, 0.3 magnitudes for photometry, and 85% for object classification. As demonstrated by the comparison to the SDSS EDR and other zone catalogs, systematic astrometric and photometric errors exist in this version, and there may be large regions of sky wherein the automated verification algorithms failed without signaling an error. The release of USNO-B1.0 is a compromise between the desire for public access and the process of catalog compilation and verification. The next step in the USNO-B process will be the database join with the 2-Micron All Sky Survey (Skrutskie et al. 1997; http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass), and this will entail a top-to-bottom verification and recalibration of the USNO-B algorithms. The scheduled release date for USNO-B1.1 is September 2003. As was USNO-A, USNO-B is just a milestone in the processing of the PMM’s archive. Future work will be directed toward finding a way to calibrate the data from all of the plates that PMM has scanned, and to identify a method to make these available to the community. Manpower and costs are finite, but the quality and importance of the historic photographic data justify these efforts.

## 10 Acknowledgments

The first, and probably the most important acknowledgment goes to the many individuals (observers, technicians, assistants, graduate students, etc.), mostly anonymous except in biodegrading paper logs and documents, whose dedication and expertise have produced the stunning collection of plates that PMM had the privilege of scanning. The record of the sky is irreplaceable, and that it is of such high quality serves as an inspiration to those who follow in their footsteps. Most of the errors and inaccuracies in USNO-B belong to PMM, and not to the original archive.

Although technically in the public domain and hence requiring no acknowledgment, it is appropriate to repeat these sentences from Minkowski and Abell (1963). “The Sky Survey was made financially possible by grants from the National Geographic Society. The society provided the photographic materials and special equipment required, the salaries of the personnel employed full or part time on the survey, and the production of the two sets of contact positives on glass of each survey photograph. The observing time with the 48-inch Schmidt telescope required to obtain the Sky Survey photographs was made available by the Palomar Observatory of the California institute of Technology.”

This work is based partly on photographic plates obtained at the Palomar Observatory 48-inch Oschin Telescope for the Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey which was funded by the Eastman Kodak Company, the National Geographic Society, the Samuel Oschin Foundation, the Alfred Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation grants AST84-08225, AST87-19465, AST90-23115 and AST93-18984, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration grants NGL 05002140 and NAGW 1710.

Some of the measures used in the USNO-B catalog are based on photographic data obtained using the UK Schmidt Telescope. The UK Schmidt Telescope was operated by the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, with funding from the UK Science and Engineering Research Council, until June 1988, and thereafter by the Anglo-Australian Observatory. Original materials are copyrighted by the Royal Observatory Edinburgh and the Anglo-Australian Observatory, and the plates were scanned with their permission.

Thanks are expressed to the European Southern Observatory (ESO) for permission to scan the ESO-R survey glass plate copies housed at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. ESO retains copyright and other intellectual property rights to these plates.

Special thanks are extended to those at California Institute of Technology, Royal Observatory Edinburgh, and the Anglo-Australian observatory for the loan of original plate material, and to the National Optical Astronomy Observatory for loaning their collection of glass copies.

The continuing support of the U. S. Air Force, particularly HQ AFSPC/DOY (and predecessors) and Dr. Joseph Liu, is greatly appreciated. It is rare to see such a successful combination of Mission, Operational, and scientific goals.

BC is grateful to Jeff Secker for providing invaluable high resolution digital imaging of the Coma cluster with which the training set for the image classifier was constructed.

Funding for the creation and distribution of the SDSS Archive has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, and the Max Planck Society. The SDSS Web site is http://www.sdss.org/.

The SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC) for the Participating Institutions. The Participating Institutions are The University of Chicago, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, The Johns Hopkins University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), New Mexico State University, University of Pittsburgh, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington.


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# An improvement of the BeppoSAX LECS and MECS positioning accuracy

## 1 Introduction

The 0.1-10 keV imaging instruments on-board the BeppoSAX satellite (Boella et al. 1997a ) contribute significantly to the study of the X-ray sky.

Among the important topics studied, we can certainly include the investigation of the nature of the sources producing the Cosmic X-ray Background (Giommi et al. giommi98 (1998), giommi00 (2000); Fiore et al. fiore99 (1999), fiore01 (2001); Comastri et al. comastri (2001); Vignali et al. vignali (2001); La Franca et al. lafranca (2002)), the study of the X-ray afterglows of Gamma-Ray Bursts (e.g., Antonelli et al. lucio (2000); Feroci et al. feroci (2001); in ’t Zand et al. zand01 (2001); Piro et al. piro (2002)) and the identification of new X-ray transients in the galactic bulge (e.g., the galactic black hole candidate XTE J1908+094, in ’t Zand et al. zand02 (2002)).

Crucial, in all these studies, is an accurate determination of the celestial coordinates of the imaged X-ray source, since it may allow a firm identification of its counterpart at other wavelengths.

Previous discussions of the positioning accuracy of the BeppoSAX MECS instrument (Ricci et al. ricci (1998); Fiore et al. fiore01 (2001)) reported an error of $``$ 1 arcmin at the 90% confidence level and pointed out that a significant contribution to the X-ray coordinate error comes from systematic uncertainties due to the absolute spacecraft attitude reconstruction.

With the aim of understanding the origin of these systematic uncertainties we present here a detailed study of the source location accuracy of the BeppoSAX imaging instruments.

## 2 Data analysis

The scientific instrumentation on-board the BeppoSAX satellite includes four co-aligned X-ray telescopes, each composed of a grazing incidence Mirror Unit and of a position sensitive Gas Scintillation Proportional Counter located at the focal plane.

Three of these systems are nearly identical and, collectively, constitute the Medium Energy Concentrator Spectrometer (MECS, Boella et al. 1997b ). The three units, named MECS1, MECS2 and MECS3, are sensitive in the 1.3-10 keV energy band.

The fourth system, the Low Energy Concentrator Spectrometer (LECS, Parmar et al. parmar (1997)), has a mirror design identical to the one of the other three units, but the detector is sensitive to X-ray photons in the 0.1-10 keV energy band.

The image size of both instruments is $`256\times 256`$ pixels and the detector pixel size, near the center of the field of view, is $`14`$” for the LECS and $`19`$” for the MECS.

We have studied the source positioning accuracy of LECS and MECS instruments using a set of X-ray sources observed by BeppoSAX for which the position of the optical counterpart is known to within 1”.

LECS and MECS fields have been selected according to the following criteria:

* the target is on-axis and relatively bright
($`>10^2\mathrm{cts}\mathrm{s}^1`$ for both LECS and MECS)
* the target is neither extended nor confused
* the whole range of spacecraft roll angle values, from $`90^{}`$ to $`+270^{}`$, is uniformly covered (for a definition of roll angle see the Appendix)
* the observation has been performed later than May 6th 1998.

The last condition has been imposed to minimize position uncertainties since the BeppoSAX attitude data before May 6th 1998 are affected by relatively large inaccuracies (see Sect. 5).

The above conditions resulted in the selection of a sample of 72 X-ray fields which consists of 49 pointings of AGNs, 14 of Stars and 9 of X-ray binaries111A table containing the list of the sources used in this analysis is available at http://www.asdc.asi.it/bepposax/positions/table.html..

LECS and co-added MECS2+MECS3 (hereafter MECS) images have been used. MECS1 data are not included in the analysis since this unit failed on May 6th 1997.

Images were accumulated in the 2-10 keV band (channels 44-220) for the MECS and in the 0.1-9.5 keV band (channels 10-950) for the LECS. Event files from the BeppoSAX public archive (Giommi & Fiore pao\_fab (1997)) at the ASI Science Data Center (ASDC) have been used.

To determine the celestial coordinates of the X-ray sources we used the sky positions stored in the headers of LECS and MECS event files. The source detection has been performed using a variation of the DETECT routine of the XIMAGE package (Giommi et al. giommi92 (1992)) as described in Fiore et al. fiore01 (2001).

Special attention has been devoted to the quality of the detections and each source position has been visually checked.

## 3 Comparison with optical coordinates

We have compared the celestial coordinates of the X-ray sources derived from LECS and MECS images with the accurate positions obtained from optical catalogs (Veron-Cetty & Veron veron (1996); Turon et al. turon (1992); van Paradijs xrbcat (1995)).

We have then computed RA and Dec offsets between the optical and LECS/MECS values (labelled respectively “L” and “M”) using the following definitions:

$`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha _{\mathrm{L},\mathrm{M}}=(\alpha _{\mathrm{opt}}\alpha _{\mathrm{L},\mathrm{M}})\mathrm{cos}\delta `$ (1)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta _{\mathrm{L},\mathrm{M}}=\delta _{\mathrm{opt}}\delta _{\mathrm{L},\mathrm{M}}`$ (2)
Note that RA offsets have been corrected by the factor $`\mathrm{cos}\delta `$ and represent therefore the true separation in the sky.

In Fig. 1 (panels a and c) we plot the measured $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$ vs $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta `$ values for the LECS and MECS instruments.

We have next computed the angular distances between the X-ray and optical positions. In Table 1 (top) we list the “radius” within which 68% and 90% of the objects are included. All the values in Table 1 have been rounded to unity.

## 4 The dependence on roll angle

As can be seen in Fig. 1 (panel c) the $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta `$ values for the MECS are not uniformly distributed around the zero values, indicating that a systematic error affects the source positioning accuracy of the instrument. For the LECS (panel a) we note that the same effect is not evident.

Moreover, Table 1 shows that the positions derived from the LECS instrument are more accurate (29” error radius at the 90% confidence level) with respect to those obtained from the MECS (41”).

To investigate in more details these results we have searched for a possible dependence of RA and Dec offsets on the satellite roll angle $`\rho `$.

In Fig. 2 we plot $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta `$ as a function of the spacecraft roll angle. As can be clearly seen, for both instruments a strong correlation between these quantities and the roll angle is found. Furthermore, we see that $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta `$ values follow a sinusoidal law and that the amplitude of this effect is $``$ 15” in the case of the LECS and $``$ 25” for the MECS.

We have also studied individually the single MECS units to verify if a specific offset dependence on the roll angle is present. We performed the analysis described above on MECS2 and MECS3 images separately obtaining the same results found in the study of the co-added images222An analysis of the positioning accuracy of the single MECS units can be found at http://www.asdc.asi.it/bepposax/report/report.html..

The fact that LECS and MECS coordinate offsets are correlated with the satellite roll angle is a sure indication of a residual misalignment of both instruments with respect to the spacecraft Z axis (the one co-aligned with the instruments).

The origin of the residual misalignment of LECS and MECS instruments is discussed in the next section.

## 5 The LECS and MECS residual misalignment

As already mentioned in Sect. 2, the BeppoSAX attitude data during the first two years of the mission (June 1996-May 1998) have been affected by relatively large systematic inaccuracies.

Since, as we will see, these inaccuracies are at the origin of the observed LECS and MECS residual misalignment, we briefly discuss this topic. Some useful definitions and formulae concerning the attitude can be found in the Appendix.

In summer 1997 an error of about 20” in the misalignment matrices of the three satellite star-trackers, used to track the guide stars and control the spacecraft attitude, was discovered.

As the following investigation revealed, the error originated because the coordinates of the guide stars used by the spacecraft star-trackers were not corrected for the annual aberration due to the heliocentric motion of the Earth.

A new computation of the star-trackers misalignment matrices was soon performed (August 1997), but during the following months rather large movements of the spacecraft (up to $`2`$ arcmin) when the attitude control was switched between different star-trackers were observed.

A detailed analysis of the problem pointed out an error in the correction for annual aberration of the guide stars coordinates which caused even larger errors in the star-trackers misalignment matrices and, consequently, larger attitude inaccuracies. A new and exact computation of the star-trackers misalignment matrices was then performed on May 6th 1998.

The problems listed above have determined spacecraft attitude data inaccuracies for observations carried out in the period June 1996 - May 6th 1998. Due to both technical and financial reasons, a new computation of the attitude of this set of observations is not foreseen.

We identify these attitude inaccuracies as the cause of the observed residual misalignment of LECS and MECS instruments, as suggested by the following considerations. The misalignment of the X-ray telescopes with respect to the spacecraft Z axis was accurately calibrated using a set of dedicated observations (Matteuzzi alessio (1998)) during the BeppoSAX Science Verification Phase. In the case of the MECS, the errors in the angles of the computed misalignment matrices $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{mis}}`$ (see the Appendix for details) are $`15^{\prime \prime }`$ (Chiappetti, priv. comm.).

Since this set of observations was carried out in 1996, the calibration of LECS and MECS misalignment has been based on attitude data affected by significant inaccuracies. Our conclusion is that this fact has induced a systematic error in the misalignment matrices computation of the two instruments.

## 6 Correction of LECS and MECS coordinates

The observed dependence of LECS and MECS $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta `$ values on the spacecraft roll angle $`\rho `$ (see Fig. 2) allows us to parameterize, as a function of the roll angle, the LECS and MECS residual misalignment and to compute analytical formulae that can be used to correct the sky coordinates derived from the two instruments.

To this end, we have fitted the data plotted in Fig. 2 with the function $`f(\rho )=A\mathrm{cos}(\rho +\varphi )+c`$. We obtained the following best fits for LECS and MECS respectively:

$`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha _\mathrm{L}=15\mathrm{cos}(\rho 140)+2[\mathrm{arcsec}]`$ (3)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta _\mathrm{L}=19\mathrm{cos}(\rho 236)4[\mathrm{arcsec}]`$ (4)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha _\mathrm{M}=27\mathrm{cos}(\rho 12)+3[\mathrm{arcsec}]`$ (5)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta _\mathrm{M}=26\mathrm{cos}(\rho 100)4[\mathrm{arcsec}]`$ (6)
where $`\rho `$ is the median of the roll angle values during the considered observation expressed in degrees.

These best fits are plotted as solid lines in Fig. 2. In Table 2 we report the corresponding reduced $`\chi ^2`$ values, the parameter best fit values and the associated errors at the 90% confidence level for three interesting parameters.

From the definition of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta `$ it follows that the corrected values of LECS and MECS coordinates are given by:

$`\alpha _{\mathrm{L},\mathrm{M}}^{\mathrm{cor}}=\alpha _{\mathrm{L},\mathrm{M}}+\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha _{\mathrm{L},\mathrm{M}}/\mathrm{cos}\delta `$ (7)
$`\delta _{\mathrm{L},\mathrm{M}}^{\mathrm{cor}}=\delta _{\mathrm{L},\mathrm{M}}+\mathrm{\Delta }\delta _{\mathrm{L},\mathrm{M}}`$ (8)
Equations (7) and (8) can be used to correct the sky positions derived from LECS and MECS images. Alternatively these formulae can be applied to modify the headers’ keywords of LECS and MECS FITS event files (see Sect. 8).

In order to estimate the positioning accuracy of the two instruments after the coordinate correction, we have applied Eqs. (7) and (8) to the coordinates of the 72 X-ray detections of our sample and computed again the offsets between LECS/MECS and optical positions.

The results are shown in Fig. 1 (panels b and d). As can be seen, the offsets are significantly reduced and the non uniform distribution of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta `$ values for the MECS is no longer present.

The 68% and 90% error radius values for LECS and MECS after the coordinate correction are reported in Table 1 (bottom), where we can see that their positioning accuracy has improved by a factor of $`2`$.

The residual error in the location of X-ray sources (16” and 17”, for LECS and MECS respectively, at the 90% confidence level) can be ascribed to the statistical uncertainty due to the Point Spread Function of the instruments (Fiore et al. fiore01 (2001)). Moreover, we outline that these values are of the same order (or even better) of the original LECS and MECS pixel size, showing that actually we have reached a positioning accuracy which is close to the limit of the detectors.

### 6.1 Off-axis sources

We have seen that LECS and MECS images are shifted in RA and Dec by an amount of $``$ 20”.

Our analysis is based on the positions of on-axis sources and therefore it is not capable to check if a further rotation of the X-ray images around the center of the field of view is present. However, as the following argument shows, the effect on the coordinates of off-axis sources is expected to be negligible.

The amplitude of the rotation should be $``$ 30”, i.e. the amount of the spacecraft attitude inaccuracy. A 30” rotation of the image around its center has the effect of shifting the coordinates of a source located at an off-axis angle of 30 arcmin of a very small distance ($``$ 0.3”) and can be therefore neglected.

We have verified this comparing the BeppoSAX X-ray and optical positions of a small sample of off-axis sources. In all cases we have found that Eqs. (7) and (8) corrects properly the positions of the off-axis sources.

## 7 Positioning accuracy before May 1998

In this section we discuss the positioning accuracy of LECS and MECS for observations carried out before May 6th 1998.

We restricted first our study to a sample of 77 X-ray fields relative to the time interval June 1996-May 1997. The sample consists of 50 pointings of AGNs, 21 of X-ray binaries and 6 of Stars, and has been selected according to the first three criteria listed in Sect. 2. For the LECS we considered a subsample of 57 images, since in 20 of the selected fields the exposures were very short or there was a lack of data. Since the MECS1 unit was still working during this period we used co-added MECS1+MECS2+MECS3 images.

We repeated for LECS and MECS fields the analysis described in the previous sections. We found a larger scatter of the offsets between the X-ray and optical positions with respect to observations performed after May 6th 1998, as expected from the fact that the spacecraft attitude data for this sample are less accurate.

In Table 3 (top) we report the corresponding LECS and MECS 68% and 90% error radius values (numbers have been rounded to unity).

We next verified that Eqs. (3), (4), (5) and (6) describe well the dependence of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta `$ on the roll angle and can be therefore used to correct the LECS and MECS celestial coordinates also for observations carried out during this time interval (the corresponding reduced $`\chi ^2`$ values are $`\chi _\nu ^2=1.69`$ for $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha _\mathrm{L}`$, $`\chi _\nu ^2=1.78`$ for $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta _\mathrm{L}`$, $`\chi _\nu ^2=1.42`$ for $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha _\mathrm{M}`$ and $`\chi _\nu ^2=1.58`$ for $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta _\mathrm{M}`$).

The separate analysis of MECS1, MECS2 and MECS3 images confirmed that, also for the observations of this sample, there is no difference in the misalignment of the single units.

In Table 3 (bottom) we list the LECS and MECS 68% and 90% error radius values after the coordinate correction of Eqs. (7) and (8) for the 77 (57 for the LECS) X-ray detections of the sample.

As can be seen, the correction improves the source location accuracy of both instruments. Moreover, from a comparison of the error radii of Table 3 with those of Table 1, we see that the inaccurate attitude data during this period affect significantly the positioning precision of LECS and MECS.

We have not repeated the whole analysis for observations performed between June 1997 and May 6th 1998, since the rather large spacecraft attitude inaccuracies (up to 1-2 arcmin) during this time interval dominate the $``$ 20” residual misalignment of LECS and MECS.

Given the attitude inaccuracy, a 90% error radius of $``$ 1.2 arcmin should be used for LECS and MECS observations performed during this period. A boresight correction with respect to the known position of a source in the field of view (if available) may be used to greatly reduce this error.

## 8 Correction of LECS and MECS event files

Equations (7) and (8) correct the sky positions derived fromBeppoSAX LECS and MECS data. In particular the accuracy of all the celestial coordinates already published in literature can be improved applying the two formulae.

These equations can also be used to modify the headers of LECS and MECS FITS event files, thus allowing to derive from data sky positions that have the coordinate correction already applied.

To this end, we have developed a specific task that updates according to Eqs. (7) and (8) the values of the sky coordinates at reference pixel stored in the headers of LECS and MECS event files.

The task, named saxposcor, can be downloaded from a dedicated web page where a detailed description of the task and of its usage can be found (http://www.asdc.asi.it/bepposax/coord\_correction.html).

The headers of all LECS and MECS event files in the BeppoSAX archive at the ASDC have been modified with saxposcor on March 12 2002 and are available on-line. The BeppoSAX data reduction software SAXDAS (since version 2.3.0) includes the coordinate correction discussed here and therefore automatically corrects the headers of LECS and MECS event files.

All the details concerning the the BeppoSAX ASDC archive correction can be found on the mentioned web page.

## 9 Summary

We have presented a study of the positioning accuracy of the BeppoSAX LECS and MECS instruments using a set of archival images for which the position of the target is known to within 1”.

We have found that a residual misalignment with respect to the spacecraft Z axis of $`17^{\prime \prime }`$ for the LECS and $`27^{\prime \prime }`$ for the MECS was present.

This residual misalignment introduces a systematic error in the derived LECS and MECS source positions which depends on the spacecraft roll angle.

We give analytical formulae that can be used to correct the celestial coordinates derived from the two instruments. After the coordinate correction the source location error of LECS and MECS reduces respectively to 16” and 17” at the 90% confidence level. This represents an improvement by a factor of $`2`$. The residual uncertainty can be ascribed to the instrumental Point Spread Function and is of the order of the detectors pixel size.

Our work constitutes the first joint presentation of LECS and MECS imaging capabilities. The improvement presented here, which can be considered as a final reference of the location accuracy of LECS and MECS, can be useful for multi-wavelength studies and future works based on BeppoSAX source catalogs.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank F. Fiore and P. Giommi for useful discussions and a careful supervision of the work, Tim Oosterbroek for having stimulated the beginning of this study and the referee, L. Chiappetti, for helpful comments which improved the paper. We also thank B. Saija and F. Tamburelli for their help in the development of the script saxposcor.

## Appendix A On Satellite Attitude

In this Appendix we give some definitions and formulae concerning the BeppoSAX attitude data, the instruments misalignment and the conversion of detector coordinates to celestial coordinates.

### A.1 Spacecraft Attitude

The satellite attitude is defined as the orientation of the satellite axes (X,Y,Z) as a function of time.

The attitude is controlled through three on-board optical star-trackers which, for a given pointing, image the available guide stars in their field of view. When the guide stars are unavailable (e.g. for Earth occultation) the satellite orientation is determined by a set of additional instruments, i.e. by on-board gyroscopes, a solar sensor and a magnetic field sensor.

The guide stars celestial coordinates and the misalignment matrices of the three star-trackers with respect to the spacecraft axes are subsequently used on ground, by the BeppoSAX Attitude and Orbit Control Subsystem (AOCS), to reconstruct the spacecraft attitude.

Specifically, the attitude data consist of a file containing RA and Dec values of the three spacecraft axes ($`\alpha _{\mathrm{X},\mathrm{Y},\mathrm{Z}}`$ and $`\delta _{\mathrm{X},\mathrm{Y},\mathrm{Z}}`$) as a function of time (the time bin is 0.5 s).

The satellite attitude may be also described in terms of a rotation with respect to the celestial coordinate system. Following the Euler angles definitions (Goldstein Goldstein (1980)) we obtain the following expressions for the three rotation angles $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ e $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$:

$`\mathrm{\Phi }=90+\alpha _\mathrm{Z}`$ (9)
$`\mathrm{\Theta }=90\delta _\mathrm{Z}`$ (10)
$`\mathrm{\Psi }=\mathrm{atan}(\mathrm{sin}\delta _\mathrm{X}/\mathrm{sin}\delta _\mathrm{Y})`$ (11)
Given the attitude Euler angles it is useful to define the roll angle $`\rho `$:

$$\rho =\mathrm{\Psi }90$$
(12)
and to describe the spacecraft attitude with the three angles $`\alpha _\mathrm{Z}`$, $`\delta _\mathrm{Z}`$ and $`\rho `$.

### A.2 Instruments Misalignments

Given a satellite attitude reconstruction, in order to associate a celestial coordinates grid to the LECS and MECS images the misalignment between the optical axes of the X-ray telescopes with respect to the satellite axes (X,Y,Z) has to be taken into account.

This misalignment is described in terms of three subsequent rotations around the satellite axes. If we call $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{mis}}`$ the instruments misalignment matrix and $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{att}}`$ the spacecraft Euler matrix associated to the angles $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ e $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$, we can define the matrix $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{det}}`$

$$\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{det}}=\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{mis}}\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{att}}$$
(13)
which allows to associate a celestial coordinate system to the detector image. The misalignment matrices $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{mis}}`$ have been computed by the LECS and MECS scientific teams.

### A.3 Sky Coordinates Computation

A detailed discussion of the procedure used to convert LECS and MECS raw detector pixels to linearized detector pixels and then to sky pixels is beyond the scope of this Appendix and we briefly summarise only the main steps.

First, the raw (electronic) detector pixels are converted to a physical distance (in mm) on the detector surface. Since the response of the detector is affected by some nonlinearities, which have been calibrated on ground, this step involves a coordinate linearization which corrects image distortions.

Second, the distance in mm on the detector is converted to detector linearized pixels. A choice of a pixel size of 8”, for both LECS and MECS, is included in this step.

Third, detector linearized pixels are converted to sky coordinates pixels. This step involves the use of the matrix $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{det}}`$ which allows to associate celestial coordinates to the detector linearized image.

The celestial coordinates of a “reference” detector pixel and the roll angle, computed as the median of the values assumed during the observation, are stored in the headers of LECS and MECS event files.