Astronomical Image Simulation for Telescope and Survey Development

TL;DR

The paper introduces 'simage', a software suite for simulating realistic extragalactic images based on real observations, aiding telescope and survey development with customizable parameters and weak lensing features.

Contribution

The paper presents a new, flexible simulation tool that models complex galaxy morphologies and observational effects for astronomical image analysis.

Findings

Simulated images match real galaxy distributions and morphologies.

Supports various observational parameters and noise sources.

Includes weak gravitational lensing effects.

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.