A star-based method for precise flux calibration of the Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST) slitless spectroscopic survey

Abstract

The upcoming Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST) slitless spectroscopic survey poses a challenge of flux calibration, which requires a large number of flux-standard stars. In this work, we design an uncertainty-aware residual attention network, the UaRA-net, to derive the CSST SEDs with a resolution of R = 200 over the wavelength range of 2500-10000 \AA using LAMOST normalized spectra with a resolution of R = 2000 over the wavelength range of 4000-7000 \AA. With the special structure and training strategy, the proposed model can not only provide accurate predictions of SEDs but also their corresponding errors. The precision of the predicted SEDs depends on effective temperature (Teff), wavelength, and the LAMOST spectral signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), particularly in the GU band. For stars with Teff = 6000 K, the typical SED precisions in the GU band are 4.2%, 2.1%, and 1.5% at SNR values of 20, 40, and 80, respectively. As Teff increases to 8000 K, the precision increases to 1.2%, 0.6%, and 0.5%, respectively. The precision is higher at redder wavelengths. In the GI band, the typical SED precisions for stars with Teff = 6000 K increase to 0.3%, 0.1%, and 0.1% at SNR values of 20, 40, and 80, respectively. We further verify our model using the empirical spectra of the MILES and find good performance. The proposed method will open up new possibilities for optimal utilization of slitless spectra of the CSST and other surveys.