Announcements
Integration Time Calculator (ITC)
The NIRI Integration Time Calculator (ITC) can be used to determine limiting magnitudes, exposure times, S/N ratios, background levels, etc. for a wide range of source properties, observing conditions, and NIRI configurations.
The ITC has been used to generate tables of sensitivity estimates, which usually agree with values measured on the telescope to 20%. However, because some conditions vary unpredictably (e.g., the OH sky emission, which dominates the 1-2.4μm background, can vary by a factor of two from hour to hour), one should consider the ITC predictions to be accurate only to within a few tens of percent.
The ITC is not available for AO imaging at wavelengths beyond the K band. However, it is possible to use ALTAIR for imaging in the 3-4μm region. For AO imaging at L', throughput is reduced by a factor of about 7 because the Altair dichroic was not originally designed for thermal observations. Experiments show that with ALTAIR the background per pixel at L' increases by 10X (3.2X increase in noise). Thus, signal to noise (S/N) is reduced by a factor of ~20 with ALTAIR due to the dichroic and warm optics. ALTAIR does improve a 0.3" FWHM image of a point source at L' to ~0.1" FWHM, implying a S/N increase of 9. Thus, overall, there is about a factor 2 reduction in S/N with the use of ALTAIR in L'. However, there is an overall gain in angular resolution, which may be useful for some programs involving bright targets which require improved angular resolution.
NIRI is only available for imaging due to problems with the focal plane mask and beam splitter mechanisms. The spectroscopic setups are provided in the ITC for use in archival data reduction.
In the four sections of this form, select the appropriate astronomical source, telescope and instrument configuration, observing conditions, and observation parameters. Click on the calculate button (
) at the bottom of any section to submit the parameters from all the sections to the server or the reset button (
) to reset all parameters to their defaults. The results are reported in a separate web page that can be resized and printed.
See the ITC Help for general guidance on use of the Integration Time Calculators, and the (more info) links for specific help on each section of the form.
WARNING: A bug has been reported in the NIRI ITC when performing calculations on extended sources with uniform surface brightness and using Altair for guiding and the "optimum S/N" software aperture size. Until the problem is resolved, please manually select the software aperture size (under "Analysis method") when using extended sources with uniform surface brightness and Altair.
If the form below does not appear then you may need to check with your system administrator about allowing communication with http://itc.gemini.edu:9080 through your firewall.