(Received 12 March 2002 / Accepted 27 June 2002)
Abstract
Long baseline stellar interferometry shares with other techniques the need for
calibrator stars in order to correct for instrumental and atmospheric effects.
We present a catalogue of 374 stars carefully selected to be used for that purpose
in the near infrared. Owing to several convergent criteria with the work of
Cohen et al. (1999AJ....117.1864C), this catalogue is in essence a subset of
their self-consistent all-sky network of spectro-photometric calibrator stars.
For every star, we provide the angular limb-darkened diameter, uniform disc
angular diameters in the J, H and K bands, the Johnson photometry and other
useful parameters. Most stars are type III giants with spectral types K or M0,
magnitudes V=3-7 and K=0-3. Their angular limb-darkened diameters range from
1 to 3 mas with a median uncertainty as low as 1.2%. The median distance from
a given point on the sky to the closest reference is 5.2{deg}, whereas this
distance never exceeds 16.4{deg} for any celestial location. (1 data file).
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