Colors of v3 Read1-Saturated Source Extractions

Below are color-magnitude and color-color Hess diagrams for stars which were saturated in Read1 but properly photometered in all three bands by the v3 pipeline (rd_flg=333). The plots largely speak for themselves:
  1. The colors of the bluest stars follow main-sequence colors.
  2. The most abundant stars are reddened giant and AGB stars.
  3. The reddest stars follow the locus of either reddened giant/AGB stas or the carbon-star locus.
  4. The distribution of sources is largely unchanged with a magnitude cut at Ks<1 rather than Ks<3 indicating that the processing seems to be linear even for the brightest stars. The brightest star in the sample was Ks=-4.
  5. These features become more apparent in a direct comparison with the LMC color-color diagram.
  6. These data have not been "seeing shape corrected." This activity may further refine a very good result.

Mike Skrutskie
March 25, 2002