KMOS Exposure Time Calculator

Seeing is an inherent property of the atmospheric turbulence, which is independent of the telescope that is observing through the atmosphere; Image Quality (IQ), defined as the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of long-exposure stellar images, is a property of the images obtained in the focal plane of an instrument mounted on a telescope observing through the atmosphere.

The IQ defines the S/N reference area for non-AO point sources in the ETC.

With the seeing consistently defined as the atmospheric PSF FWHM outside the telescope at zenith at 500 nm, the ETC models the IQ PSF as a gaussian, considering the gauss-approximated transfer functions of the atmosphere, telescope and instrument, with s=seeing, λ=wavelength, x=airmass and D=telescope diameter:

Image Quality

\( { \begin{equation} \mathit{FWHM}_{\text{IQ}} = \sqrt{\mathit{FWHM}_{\text{atm}}^2(\mathit{s},x,\lambda)+\mathit{FWHM}_{\text{tel}}^2(\mathit{D},\lambda)+\mathit{FWHM}_{\text{ins}}^2(\lambda)} \end{equation} } \)

For fibre-fed instruments, the instrument transfer function is not applied.

The diffraction limited PSF FWHM for the telescope with diameter D at observing wavelength λ is modeled as:

\( \begin{equation} \begin{aligned} \mathit{FWHM}_{\text{tel}} & = 1.028 \frac{\lambda}{D} \text{, } & \text{ with } \lambda \text{ and D in the same unit}\\ & = 0.000212 \frac{\lambda}{D} \text{arcsec, } & \text{ with } \lambda \text{ in nm and D in m}. \end{aligned} \end{equation} \)

For point sources and non-AO instrument modes, the atmospheric PSF FWHM with the given seeing \(s\) (arcsec), airmass \(x\) and wavelength \({ \lambda }\) (nm) is modeled as a gaussian profile with:

$${\mathit{FWHM}}_{\text{atm}}(\mathit{s},\mathit{x},\lambda) = \mathit{s} \cdot x^{0.6} \cdot (\frac {\lambda} {500})^{-0.2} \cdot \sqrt{[1+F_{\text{Kolb}} \cdot 2.183 \cdot ({r_0}/L_{0})^{0.356})]}$$

Note: The model sets \({ \mathit{FWHM}}_{\text{atm}}\)=0 if the argument of the square root becomes negative \({ [1+F_{\text{Kolb}} \cdot 2.183 \cdot ({r_0}/L_{0})^{0.356}] < 0 }\) , which happens when the Fried parameter \({ {r_0} } \) reaches its threshold of \({ r_{\text{t}} = L_{0} \cdot [1/(2.183 \cdot F_{\text{Kolb}})]^{1/0.356}}\). For the VLT and \({ L_{0} = 23m}\) , this corresponds to \({ r_{\text{t}} = 2.63m} \).

\({ L_{0} }\) is the wave-front outer-scale. We have adopted a value of \({ L_{0} }\)=23m, which is the generally accepted value for Paranal (Dali Ali et al. 2010, A&A 524, A73; Martin et al. 2000, A&AS, 144, 39).

\(F_{\text{Kolb}} \) is the Kolb factor (ESO Technical Report #12):

$$F_{\text{Kolb}} = \frac {1}{1+300 {\text{ }} D/L_{0}}-1$$

For the VLT and \({ L_{0} }\)=23m, this corresponds to \(F_{\text{Kolb}} = -\)0.990737.

\( {r_0} \) is the Fried parameter at the requested seeing \(s\), wavelength \({ \lambda }\) and airmass \(x\):

$$r_0 = 0.100 \cdot s^{-1} \cdot (\frac{\lambda}{500})^{1.2} \cdot x^{-0.6} \text{ m, } \text{ } \text{ } \text{ } \text{ with } s \text{ in arcsec } \text{and } \lambda \text{ in nm.} $$