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Beginning 3 December 2019, improved astrometry for WFC3 and ACS imaging data is available from MAST and includes two new corrections to the header world coordinate system (WCS). The first includes an updated Hubble Guide Star Catalog (GSC version 2.4.0) which updates the coordinates of the guide stars with the positions from Gaia DR1. This reduces the typical uncertainties in the positions of the guide stars to <~100 mas over the entire sky. Combining this new information with the knowledge of the instrument distortions, an a priori correction has been made for all WFC3 and ACS observations in order to lock all HST observations onto a common absolute reference frame. When possible, an additional correction has been applied by aligning sources in each HST image directly to the Gaia catalog; this fit is referred to as an a posteriori correction. While some observing modes cannot be aligned to Gaia (e.g. grism and moving target observations) or the alignment may fail due to a lack of sources in either the HST image or the Gaia catalog, approximately 70% of the WFC3 and ACS 80% of ACS/WFC and 50% of WFC3/IR frames have been directly aligned successfully. For these data products, the typical pointing uncertainty is reduced to ~10 mas, although the uncertainties increase for observations further in time from the Gaia reference epoch (2015.0 for DR1, 2015.5 for DR2)

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1

Public Release

ACS installed Mar 20020.4

GSC2.3.4 aligned to Gaia DR1    

Complete GSC Summary

Catalog

Release Date

Mean Epoch of catalog positions

Typical errors

Worst errors

Total Error (including SI to FGS alignment)

Comment

GSC 2.4.0

Jun 1989

1-2”

 GSC1 summary

GSC 1.1

Aug 1992

1981.8

0.5”

~1”

~1”

First version published for the user community

Used by HST operations prior to Cycle 15

WFPC2 installed Dec 1993

+ Gaia FitDec 20192015.50.01"
0.01"WCSNAME='FIT_[REL|IMG]_GAIADR[12]'

GSC 2.4.0

Oct 2017

2015.0

0.03”


0.10”

GSC2.3.4 aligned to Gaia DR1    

Complete GSC Summary

WCSNAME='IDC*-GSC240', 'IDC*-HSC30'

GSC 2.3.3Oct 2009



WFC3 installed May 2009

GSC 2.0

Jan 2000

Science target fields only; GSC2 summary

GSC 2.2.0

Jun 2001

GSC 2.3.2

Oct 2005

1992.5

0.3”

0.75”

~0.3”

Public Release

GSC 1.1 and GSC 2.3.2 Comparison

GSC 2.

3.3
Oct 2009

2.0

Jun 2001





Public Release

ACS installed Mar 2002

WFC3 installed May 2009

GSC 2

.0

Oct 2017

2015.0

0.03”

0.1”

Jan 2000





Science target fields only; GSC2 summary

GSC 1.1

Aug 1992

1981.8

0.5”

~1”

~1”

First version published for the user community

Used by HST operations prior to Cycle 15

WFPC2 installed Dec 1993

GSC 1.0

Jun 1989



1-2”


 GSC1 summary

HST Astrometry Project

The coordinates populated in the FITS headers of HST observations retrieved from DADS (the HST Data Archiving and Distribution Service) were derived based on the guide star coordinates in use at the time of the observation. As the accuracy in these catalogs were refined over time, the pointing accuracy of HST has also improved. Table 1 lists the catalog in use at the time of installation of the three main imaging cameras (WFPC2, ACS, and WFC3) and the typical errors at each epoch.

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