Simulating Photometric Images of Moving Targets with Photon-mapping

TL;DR

This paper introduces a photon-mapping based method to realistically simulate photometric images of moving targets, accounting for various observational parameters, and validated by high correlation with actual images.

Contribution

The paper presents a new, user-friendly photon-mapping technique for simulating realistic moving target images, incorporating detailed observational factors and validated against real data.

Findings

Simulated images closely match observed ones with high correlation coefficients.

The method effectively accounts for light source nature, telescope tracking, PSF, and CCD specs.

High fidelity images enable better planning and analysis of astronomical observations.

Abstract

We present a novel, easy-to-use method based on the photon-mapping technique to simulate photometric images of moving targets. Realistic images can be created in two passes: photon tracing and image rendering. The nature of light sources, tracking mode of the telescope, point spread function (PSF), and specifications of the CCD are taken into account in the imaging process. Photometric images in a variety of observation scenarios can be generated flexibly. We compared the simulated images with the observed ones. The residuals between them are negligible, and the correlation coefficients between them are high, with a median of $0.9379_{-0.0201}^{+0.0125}$ for 1020 pairs of images, which means a high fidelity and similarity. The method is versatile and can be used to plan future photometry of moving targets, interpret existing observations, and provide test images for image processing algorithms.