AETC - Example 2 : Star cluster

Simulation of J-band observations of a star cluster in a nearby galaxy as would be obtained with MICADO@E-ELT. The total exposure time is 3h This simulation was used in Gullieuszik et al. (2014, A&A). The input star list consists of two components:

the host galaxy body: spatially uniform distribution of stars. Magnitudes are calculated assuming a constant star formation rate over the last 12 Gyr,
the star cluster: stars are distruted according to a King-like profile. Magitudes are taken along theoretical isocrones obtained with the CMD web interface.

details can be found in Gullieuszik et al. (2014, A&A).

Input star catalogue

For this example we used a custom-made star catalogue with a list of positions and magnitudes. The first lines of the file are shown here as an example

#    Xpix      Ypix       mag
  339.789   551.834    19.537
  450.107   356.578    19.541
  717.363   497.668    19.545

Here you can download the input star catalogue (gzip compressed, 4.0 Mb).
The file is a subsample (1500x1500 pixels) of one of the input catalogues used in Gullieuszik et al. (2014, A&A). it lists positions and magnitudes for 465567 stars in a 1500x1500 pixels. The center of the cluster is located at x=500 pixels y=500 pixels.

Image Generation

In the AETC home page click the "Selected" radio-button and select "ELT_Micado_J" configuration in the drop-down list.
Click the "LOAD" button.

Set the exposure time and Select the source for the signal-to-noise calculation. In this example we used a star with mag=30 (Vega) in the J-band.
Set the size of the output image (1500x1500), Select "Stars" checkbox and click on the "Browse" button next to it. A File Selection Dialog box will open. Use this to select the file with the input star list.
This simulation will take some time to be completed. To avoid server timeout errors, select the "In background" radio button.
Click "SEND" to generate the image.

List of input parameters and results of SNR calculation.

Click on the "SAVE image" at the bottom of this page to save a fits file with the simulation.

A 1500x600 pixels (4.5″x1.8″) region of the simulated MICADO@E-ELT J-band image.

Click on the image to see the full 1500x1500 image.

The same image, with different luminosity cuts.

Click on the image to see the full 1500x1500 image.