The Photometric Performance and Calibration of the HST Advanced Camera For Surveys

We present the photometric calibration of the HST Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). We give here an overview of the performance and calibration of the 2 CCD cameras, the Wide Field Channel (WFC) and the High Resolution Channel (HRC), and a description of the best techniques for reducing ACS CCD data. On-orbit observations of spectrophotometric standard stars have been used to revise the pre-launch estimate of the instrument response curves to best match predicted and observed count rates. Synthetic photometry has been used to determine zeropoints for all filters in 3 magnitude systems and to derive interstellar extinction values for the ACS photometric systems. Due to the CCD internal scattering of long wavelength photons, the width of the PSF increases significantly in the near-IR and the aperture correction for photometry with near-IR filters depends on the spectral energy distribution of the source. We provide encircled energy curves and a detailed recipe to correct for the latter effect. Transformations between the ACS photometric systems and the UBVRI and WFPC2 systems are presented. In general, two sets of transformations are available: 1 based on the observation of 2 star clusters; the other on synthetic photometry. We discuss the accuracy of these transformations and their sensitivity to details of the spectra being transformed. Initial signs of detector degradation due to the HST radiative environment are already visible. We discuss the impact on the data in terms of dark rate increase, charge transfer inefficiency, and hot pixel population.