Precision Time-series Photometry in the Thermal Infrared with a “Wall-eyed” Pointing Mode at the Large Binocular Telescope

Abstract

Time-series photometry taken from ground-based facilities is improved with the use of comparison stars due to the short timescales of atmospheric-induced variability. However, the sky is bright in the thermal infrared (3-5 μm), and the correspondingly small fields of view of available detectors make it highly unusual to have a calibration star in the same field as a science target. Here, we present a new method of obtaining differential photometry by simultaneously imaging a science target and a calibrator star, separated by ≲2 amin, onto a 10 × 10 asec² field-of-view detector. We do this by taking advantage of the Large Binocular Telescope’s (LBT) unique binocular design to point the two co-mounted telescopes apart and simultaneously obtain both targets in three sets of observations. Results indicate that the achievable scatter in L _S -band ({λ }_c=3.3 μm) is at the percent level for bright targets and possibly better with heavier sampling and characterization of the systematics.