A Large and Precise All-Sky Photometric Standard Star Dataset Across More Than 200 Passbands
High-precision photometric standard stars play a key role in enabling accurate photometric calibration and advancing various fields of astronomy. However, due to limitations in calibration methods and the limited availability and underuse of high-precision reference data, existing photometric standard stars may suffer from insufficient numbers, systematic errors exceeding 10 milli-magnitude (mmag), limited photometric band coverage, or incomplete sky coverage, among other issues. To overcome these limitations, we have constructed the largest (over 200 million stars, 1000 times the widely recognized Landolt standards in the same magnitude range), most precise (better than 10 mmag), and most comprehensive (over 200 bands, nearly 40 times the coverage of traditional standards) all-sky standard stars. Based on standards, we have calibrated multiple survey datasets to mmag precision, and subsequently developed a complete sky distribution of stars for the Pan-STARRS system. This database, the BEst STars Database (BEST), is expected to pave the way for achieving mmag-level - or even higher - photometric precision in large-scale surveys, and to play a central role in shaping a high-precision astronomical measurement framework.
Authors
- Qiqian Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0278-7137)
- Zhirui Li
- Bowen Huang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4169-4649)
- Kai Xiao
- Yuanchang Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-7044-4393)
- Haibo Yuan
- Lin Yang
- Dongwei Fan
- Timothy C. Beers
- Yang Huang
- Mingyang Ma
- Shuai Xu
- Tao Wang
- Jifeng Liu
Institutions
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (US)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Beijing Electronic Science and Technology Institute (CN)
- Beijing Normal University (CN)
- National Space Science Center (CN)
- National Astronomical Observatories (CN)
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Scientific Data
- Published
- 2026-01-26
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06590-z
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 23.83
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
- Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics - Center for the Evolution of the Elements
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
- Office of Science
- Office of International Science and Engineering
- Nuclear Physics