High-Precision Near-Infrared Photometry of a Large Sample of Bright Stars Visible from the Northern Hemisphere

Abstract

We present the results of 8 yr of infrared photometric monitoring of a large sample of stars visible from Teide Observatory (Tenerife, Canary Islands). The final archive is made up of 10,949 photometric measures through a standard InSb single-channel photometer system, principally in JHK, although some stars have measures in L'. The core of this list of stars is the standard-star list developed for the Carlos Sánchez Telescope. A total of 298 stars have been observed on at least two occasions on a system carefully linked to the zero point defined by Vega. We present high-precision photometry for these stars. The median uncertainty in magnitude for stars with a minimum of four observations and thus reliable statistics ranges from 0.0038 mag in J to 0.0033 mag in K. Many of these stars are faint enough to be observable with array detectors (42 are K > 8) and thus to permit a linkage of the bright and faint infrared photometric systems. We also present photometry of an additional 25 stars for which the original measures are no longer available, plus photometry in L' and/or M of 36 stars from the main list. We calculate the mean infrared colors of main-sequence stars from A0 V to K5 V and show that the locus of the H-K color is linearly correlated with J-H. The rms dispersion in the correlation between J-H and H-K is 0.0073 mag. We use the relationship to interpolate colors for all subclasses from A0 V to K5 V. We find that K and M main-sequence and giant stars can be separated on the color-color diagram with high-precision near-infrared photometry and thus that photometry can allow us to identify potential mistakes in luminosity class classification.