I have been working on my photometric simulation of the SNAP telescope. As described in earlier documents,
this simulator is designed to produce realistic instrumental magnitudes without going as far down as the pixel-by-pixel details. I will use it to evaluate different observing techniques.
I have finally put into the simulation all the effects required to calculate accurately the number of photons registered by the detectors on the focal plane for stars of arbitrary position, magnitude and spectral type. There are hooks for adding the effects of readout noise, dark current, background sky, etc., but those sources of noise are not yet implemented.
As a first demonstration (and verification) of the simulator, I created a grid pattern of stars in the sky near the SNAP northern field.
The input catalog contains stars of three spectral types: A0V (hot), G0V (sun-like), and M0V (cool). The spectra are taken from A Stellar Spectral Flux Library: 1150 - 25000 A by Pickles ( 1998PASP..110..863P )all the effects required to calculate accurately the number of photons registered by the detectors on the focal plane for stars of arbitrary position, magnitude and spectral type. There are hooks for adding the effects of readout noise, dark current, background sky, etc., but those sources of noise are not yet implemented.
As a first demonstration (and verification) of the simulator, I created a grid pattern of stars in the sky near the SNAP northern field. The stars fall only in one quadrant of the detector; I don't yet include asymmetric effects, so one quadrant includes all effects.
The input catalog contains stars of three spectral types: A0V (hot), G0V (sun-like), and M0V (cool). The spectra are taken from A Stellar Spectral Flux Library: 1150 - 25000 A by Pickles ( 1998PASP..110..863P ). My simulation allows me to place stars on top of each other without any interference or cross-talk from each other (I warned you that it isn't realistic in some ways ...), so I put one star of each of these types at each position in the grid. Therefore, four stars of each spectral type fall within the field of each filter.
Some notes on the current state of the simulator: