Story
As a motivated astronomer preparing an HST proposal, I want to simulate a grism image to predict and assess the possible contamination of my single (or small number) of high-value science targets (e.g. ultra high-z galaxy, supernova or other transient in a host). This seems straightforward, I see it in proposals (that I review) and a colleague suggested it was easy. I've heard of aXe and aXeSIM, but I can't find anything useful online; so I will either abandon the proposal or make friends with someone at STScI.
Inputs
- I have a mosaic of the field (perhaps from HST perhaps not). I know where the high-value source(s) are.
- A collection of assumed SEDs for the sources in the scene.
- Maybe I have a grism image in hand. Maybe I want to assume I'll put WFC3-IR at this RA, Dec and position angle: (α,δ,θ)
Outputs
- Simulated image of the scene. This is a must, so I can put it in my HST proposal to show that I did my homework.
- Tools to predict the contamination as a means of optimizing my pointing (α,δ,θ)
Computations
- I need something that knows how to disperse a pixel and understand how to generalize that for all pixels at all wavelengths and put the flux in the right spot.
- Test for spectral overlaps
Drawbacks
- Unfortunately there are no one-stop shop tools for this
. I can see how tools like GRISMCONF are foundational, but I still don't know how put all that together. - How to I build the WCS for the possible exposure.
