SearchCal Wiki Page

The new version of SearchCal contains more than 2 million calibrator candidates whose angular diameter has been estimated in a statistical fashion. Users may want some authorized advice on which star to choose in the possibly very long list of stars returned by SearchCal. They also may want to know how to use the quite precise diameters SearchCal provides, that are now precise to a few percent.

This page is open to the calibrator group experts to give such advice.

-- GillesDuvert - 01 Jun 2017: OK, I write simple hints:

• if your science object has V<10, you probably can always find a calibrator in "Bright" mode, where the spectral type is known (safer, smaller errobars)
• if you observe redwards of J band, select K giants in priority, first in "Bright" mode, if not sufficient, in "faint" mode where the spectral type is guessed.
• on the bluer side (V, R) you probably have to remove filters that block class V early-type stars.
• warning, B and A dwarf stars that are equal-brigthness close doubles (and thus not suitable as calibrators) will fool SearchCal (until Gaia gives the distance).
• No calibrator appear --> try removing some filters (eg: enable lum. class V)
• There is a nice calibrator at a distance of 0 arc sec from my source: congrats, your source is a calibrator! Do not observe it (it's gonna be boring), just use SearchCal diameter.