An attempt at creating a common pythonic framework for telescope instrument data simulators.

ScopeSim is on pip:

pip install scopesim

ScopeSim templates provides templates for creating on-sky sources:

pip install scopesim_templates

Note

Looking for ELT specific user documentation?

See the MICADO, METIS, and MOSAIC user guides on the IRDB documentation page

Note

ScopeSim Tutorials on Youtube

A series of introductory tutorials are now available on youtube

@ScopeSimTutorials

Contents:

• Getting started
  • Code breakdown
  • Tips and tricks
  • More information
  • Contact
• Examples
  • 1: A quick use case for MICADO at the ELT
  • 2: Observing the same object with multiple telescopes
  • 3: Writing and including custom Effects
• Hints and Tricks
  • Using !-string and #-string commands
  • Turning Effect objects on or off
  • Downloading packages
  • Science target templates
  • Global rc simulation parameters
  • Source : from FITS images
  • Source : Point sources from arrays
• FAQs
  • Binding ScopeSim to a local copy of the IRDB
  • Approximate sketch of “units flow” in ScopeSim

Warning

July 2022: The downloadable content server was retired and the data migrated to a new server.

ScopeSim v0.5.1 and above have been redirected to a new server URL.

For older verions, please either upgrade to the latest version (pip install --upgrade scopesim), or follow these instructions to update the server URL in the config file.

The ScopeSim python ecosystem

There are several packages in the ScopeSim ecosystem to be aware of:

• ScopeSim: The engine behind the whole simulator

• ScopeSim Templates: A series of helper function to generate on-sky targets

• SpeXtra: A pythonic interface to many common astronomical spectra libraries

• Pyckles: Pythonic access to the Pickles (1998) spectral library and Brown (2014) spectral library

• IRDB: The Instrument Reference Database, where the instrument packages are stored

• AnisoCADO: For making SCAO PSF cubes that readable by ScopeSim

• skycalc_ipy: Connects to ESOs SkyCalc server to get atmospheric spectra

• How Many Photons: A simple package for quickly calculating the number of photons within a given astronomical filter

Note

Much more information on these packages will be coming very soon!

Contact

• For bugs, please add an issue to the github repo

• For enquiries on implementing your own instrument package, please drop us a line at

  • astar.astro@univie.ac.at or

  • kieran.leschinski@univie.ac.at

• For friendly chat, join the slack at https://join.slack.com/t/scopesim/shared_invite/zt-143s42izo-LnyqoG7gH5j~aGn51Z~4IA

API reference

scopesim.commands
scopesim.detector
scopesim.effects
scopesim.optics	Contains much of the core functionality of ScopeSim.
scopesim.server	Utilities for remotely stored data.
scopesim.source
scopesim.utils	Helper functions for ScopeSim.