Primary calibrators for SCUBA

The primary sources used for calibration of SCUBA data are the planets Mars, Uranus and Neptune. The brightness of these sources varies with time - as the spatial separation between the Earth and each planet varies. In addition the brightness of Mars varies depending on the orientation of the planet with respect to both the Earth and the Sun.

Starlink supply a command line program FLUXES which can return the expected flux for each planet for any date specified. Instructions for using FLUXES can be found here. Several options are available including writing the data to a file, and returning the values today. Alternatively if you are at the telescope you can use the FLUXNOW program which defaults to the current date and time.

There is also an online interface to the FLUXES program here.