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AOTOOLS reduces IR images from adaptive optics. It uses effective dithering, either sky subtraction or dark-subtration, and flat-fielding techniques to determine the effect of the instrument on an image of an object. It also performs bad pixel masking, degrades an AO on-axis PSF due to effects of anisoplanicity, and corrects an AO on-axis PSF due to effects of seeing.
Virtual Telescope predicts the signal-to-noise and other parameters of imaging and/or spectroscopic observations as a function of telescope size, detector noise, and other factors for the Next-Generation Space Telescope.
World Observatory visualizes S/N-versus-cost tradeoffs for large optical and near-infrared telescopes. Both mid-latitude and Arctic/Antarctic sites can be considered; the intent is a simple simulation to grow intuition for where major capital costs lie relative to key observatory design choices, and against expected scientific performance at various sites. User-defined unit costs for (a possibly "effective") roadway, enclosure, aperture, focal length, and adaptive optics can be scaled up for polar sites, and down for better seeing and lower sky brightness in K-band. Observatory models and results are immediately displayed side-by-side. Either point-source-detection S/N or recovery of bulge-to-total ratios in a simulated galaxy survey are divided by the total project cost, thus providing a universal metric.
The Global Extinction Reduction IDL codes compare optical photometry from the twin Gemini North and South Multi-Object Spectrographs (GMOS-N and GMOS-S) against the expected worsening of atmospheric transparency due to global climate change. Data from the Gemini instruments are first reduced by DRAGONS (ascl:1811.002). GER then calibrates them against the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and Gaia G-band catalogs; image rotation and alignment is accomplished via identification of sufficiently-bright stars in Gaia. A simple model of Gemini and their site characteristics is generated, including meteorology, cloudy-fractions, number of reflections, dates of re-coatings modulated by rate of efficiency decay, together with response of detectors and associated zeropoints, and can be compared with the decline of transparency due to rising temperature and associated humidity increase.
The IDL code Special-Blurring compares models of quantum-foam-induced blurring with the full dataset of gamma-ray burst localizations available from the NASA High Energy Astrophysics Science Research Archive (as of 1 November 2022). This includes GRB221009A, which was especially bright and detected in extremely high energy TeV gamma-rays. An upper limit of the parameter alpha (giving the maximal strength of quantum blurring) can be entered, which is scaled in the model of blurring (called "Phi") operating much like "seeing" from the ground in the optical, and those calculations are plotted against the observations.