CUBES and its software ecosystem: instrument simulation, control, and data processing

TL;DR

This paper describes the development of a comprehensive software ecosystem for the CUBES spectrograph, supporting its design, operation, and data processing to facilitate high-quality UV astronomical observations.

Contribution

It introduces the integrated software packages for instrument control, simulation, and data reduction, enhancing the functionality and user support for the CUBES spectrograph.

Findings

Successful integration of control, simulation, and data processing tools

Enhanced user support from proposal to data analysis

Facilitation of high-efficiency UV observations

Abstract

CUBES (Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph) is the recently approved high-efficiency VLT spectrograph aimed to observe the sky in the UV ground-based region (305-400 nm) with a high-resolution mode (~20K) and a low-resolution mode (~5K). In this paper we will briefly describe the requirements and the design of the several software packages involved in the project, namely the instrument control software, the exposure time calculator, the end-to-end simulator, and the data reduction software suite. We will discuss how the above mentioned blocks cooperate to build up a "software ecosystem" for the CUBES instrument, and to support the users from the proposal preparation to the science-grade data products.