Supernova 2006aj Comparison Star Magnitudes
See GCN 4898

In order to calibrate our CFA FLWO 1.2m photometry for SN2006aj/GRB060218 we observed Landolt standards over a range of airmasses, in UBVRri on the night of March 4, 2006 UT. We present our V-band light curve in Modjaz, et. al. 2006 (ApJ, 645, 21; astro-ph/0603377). Our UBVR photometric solution was based on the magnitudes given in Landolt, 1992. For our SDSS filters we used the r'i' magnitudes given in Smith, 2002. We applied these photometric solutions to 9 comparison stars in the field of SN2006aj (see below). Our magnitudes agree well with those found at http://brucegary.net/GRB060218/x.htm . It should be noted that our u'BVRr'i' magnitudes (u' is derived from our UBVRr' values) are respectively 0.81, 0.40, 0.27, 0.20, 0.23 and 0.15 mag fainter than those derived from or presented in GCN 4777 by Cool, et. al. at http://mizar.as.arizona.edu/~grb/public/GRB060218. From the SDSS website, we used Rodgers et al. (2005) to calculate u' from our UBVRr' data. We also used Lupton (2005) to calculate BVR mags from the SDSS values and we used the SDSS transformation to convert between ugriz and u'g'r'i'z'. This has been brought to their attention and in investigating this photometric offset, R. Cool has discovered calibration offsets between the two SDSS photometric reductions of this field indicating possible non-photometric conditions or other calibration problems in the SDSS photometry. The problem is being investigated to ensure data with suspicious photometric quality will be flagged as such in future SDSS GRB releases.

All stars except for star 7 are also SDSS stars. We hope that these magnitudes are useful to the SN and GRB communities. You are welcome to use these for your research. In any publications using these magnitudes, please cite Hicken et al. 2006, (GCN 4898) and our paper by Modjaz, et. al. 2006 (ApJ, 645, 21; astro-ph/0603377).

We also observed the field of SN2005am on this night and found our UBV magnitudes of 11 comparison stars to agree well with those listed by Li et. al. in astro-ph/0505504, bolstering our confidence in our calibration for SN2006aj.

SN2006aj/GRB060218 Comparison Stars

Star RA DEC U B V R r' i'
s1 03:21:42.767 +16:51:39.47 16.674 +/- 0.053 16.168 +/- 0.020 15.212 +/- 0.012 14.672 +/- 0.009 14.914 +/- 0.009 14.634 +/- 0.011
s2 03:21:16.375 +16:54:08.99 15.982 +/- 0.042 15.685 +/- 0.017 14.936 +/- 0.009 14.508 +/- 0.008 14.726 +/- 0.008 14.540 +/- 0.010
3 03:21:39.748 +16:51:30.40 17.353 +/- 0.077 16.398 +/- 0.023 15.276 +/- 0.012 14.622 +/- 0.008 14.884 +/- 0.008 14.508 +/- 0.010
4 03:21:40.529 +16:53:09.89 17.787 +/- 0.095 17.075 +/- 0.039 16.002 +/- 0.019 15.381 +/- 0.013 15.643 +/- 0.013 15.288 +/- 0.014
7 03:21:22.533 +16:54:05.02 13.884 +/- 0.035 13.730 +/- 0.011 13.076 +/- 0.006 12.685 +/- 0.006 12.897 +/- 0.006 12.740 +/- 0.008
8 03:21:25.221 +16:51:12.44 16.579 +/- 0.050 16.432 +/- 0.022 15.692 +/- 0.014 15.258 +/- 0.012 15.497 +/- 0.012 15.277 +/- 0.013
10 03:21:45.861 +16:54:24.68 16.607 +/- 0.050 16.501 +/- 0.025 15.839 +/- 0.015 15.424 +/- 0.013 15.631 +/- 0.013 15.427 +/- 0.014
11 03:21:43.804 +16:54:43.47 17.043 +/- 0.059 16.924 +/- 0.033 16.257 +/- 0.024 15.887 +/- 0.019 16.113 +/- 0.020 15.900 +/- 0.022
12 03:21:47.881 +16:56:47.21 17.007 +/- 0.059 16.388 +/- 0.024 15.432 +/- 0.012 14.900 +/- 0.010 15.119 +/- 0.010 14.862 +/- 0.011

Contact Malcolm Hicken (mhicken @ cfa.harvard.edu)