PhoSim Tutorial 9: How to Generate Calibration Data

Calibration data can be generated in a similar manner as with a real telescope. Basically, the commands have to be given to the 

A bias frame can be generated with the catalog:

phosim examples/bias

The catalog simply has these two commands to set the exposure time to 0 and to make the minimum number of sources to be 0. This is necessary because PhoSim will not generate chips with no sources on them by default.

vistime 0.0

minsource 0

The electron image will be empty, and the amplifier images will have the appropriate bias level and read noise. 

Similarly, a dark can be generated by closing the dome and setting the exposure time to a reasonably long value. An example of this is the following command.

phosim examples/dark

The example has the following commands that set the exposure time to 5 minutes, have the minimum source as 0, and close the dome with "telconfig 1".

vistime 300.0

minsource 0

telconfig 1

The electron image will contain dark current (if significant in the device) and many cosmic rays since the exposure time is 300 seconds. The example above produces this image: