Precise automatic differential stellar photometry

Abstract

The factors limiting the precision of differential stellar photometry are reviewed. Errors due to variable atmospheric extinction can be reduced to below 0.001 mag at good sites by utilizing the speed of robotic telescopes. Existing photometric systems produce aliasing errors, which are several millimagnitudes in general but may be reduced to about a millimagnitude in special circumstances. Conventional differential photometry neglects several other important effects, which are discussed in detail. If all of these are properly handled, it appears possible to do differential photometry of variable stars with an overall precision of 0.001 mag with ground based robotic telescopes.