Astronomical Image Simulation for Telescope and Survey Development

Abstract

We present the 'simage' software suite for the simulation of artificial extragalactic images, based empirically around real observations of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF). The simulations reproduce galaxies with realistic and complex morphologies via the modeling of UDF galaxies as shapelets. Images can be created in the B, V, i and z bands for both space- and ground-based telescopes and instruments. The simulated images can be produced for any required field size, exposure time, Point Spread Function (PSF), telescope mirror size, pixel resolution, field star density, and a variety of detector noise sources. It has the capability to create images with both a pre-determined number of galaxies or one calibrated to the number counts of pre-existing data sets such as the HST COSMOS survey. In addition, simple options are included to add a known weak gravitational lensing (both shear and flexion) to the simulated images. The software is available in Interactive Data Language (IDL) and can be freely downloaded for scientific, developmental and teaching purposes.

10 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables, PASP accepted. Now includes reference to shapelets image simulation code 'Skylens' by Meneghetti et al. (2008)

Cited by in corpus (12)

• An excess of small-scale gravitational lenses observed in galaxy clusters
• Precision simulation of ground-based lensing data using observations from space
• Simulation of Astronomical Images from Optical Survey Telescopes using a Comprehensive Photon Monte Carlo Approach
• A Detection of Weak Lensing Magnification using Galaxy Sizes and Magnitudes
• The Millennium Run Observatory: First Light
• Calibrated Ultra Fast Image Simulations for the Dark Energy Survey
• Generative deep fields: arbitrarily sized, random synthetic astronomical images through deep learning
• The importance of secondary halos for strong lensing in massive galaxy clusters across redshift
• Sensor Distortion Effects in Photon Monte Carlo Simulations
• Deformation of Optics for Photon Monte Carlo Simulations
• The analysis of effective galaxies number count for Chinese Space Station Optical Survey(CSS-OS) by image simulation
• Lossy compression of weak lensing data