The SPHEREx Sky Simulator: Science Data Modeling for the First All-Sky Near-Infrared Spectral Survey

TL;DR

The SPHEREx Sky Simulator is a software tool that models realistic infrared sky data for NASA's all-sky spectral survey, aiding in mission planning, data analysis, and systematic effect mitigation.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive simulation framework for the SPHEREx mission, integrating astrophysical, instrumental, and survey models to predict data quality and guide analysis pipelines.

Findings

Predicted 5σ point source sensitivity of m_AB 18.5–19 (0.75–3.8 μm)

Predicted 5σ point source sensitivity of m_AB 16.6–18 (3.8–5 μm)

Sensitivity limited by zodiacal light background

Abstract

We describe the SPHEREx Sky Simulator, a software tool designed to model science data for NASA's SPHEREx mission that will carry out a series of all-sky spectrophotometric surveys at $\sim$6'' spatial resolution in 102 spectral channels spanning 0.75 to 5 $\mu$m. The Simulator software implements models for astrophysical emission, instrument characteristics, and survey strategy to generate realistic infrared sky scenes as they will be observed by SPHEREx. The simulated data includes a variety of realistic noise and systematic effects that are estimated using up-to-date astrophysical measurements and information from pre-launch instrument characterization campaigns. Through the pre-flight mission phases the Simulator has been critical in predicting the impact of various effects on SPHEREx science performance, and has played an important role guiding the development of the SPHEREx data analysis pipeline. In this paper, we describe the \skysim\ architecture, pre-flight instrument and sky models, and summarize high-level predictions from the Simulator, including a pre-launch prediction for the 5$\sigma$ point source sensitivity of SPHEREx, which we estimate to be $m_{\rm AB}$ 18.5--19 from 0.75 to 3.8~$\mu$m and $m_{\rm AB}$ 16.6--18 from 3.8 to 5 $\mu$m, with the sensitivity limited by the zodiacal light background at all wavelengths. In the future, on-orbit data will be used to improve the Simulator, which will form the basis of a variety of forward-modeling tools that will be used to model myriad instrumental and astrophysical processes to characterize their systematic effects on our final data products and analyses.