Wayne - A Simulator for HST WFC3 IR Grism Spectroscopy

Wayne - A Simulator for HST WFC3 IR Grism Spectroscopy

Authors:

Varley et al

Abstract:

Wayne is an algorithm that simulates Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) grism spectroscopic frames including sources of noise and systematics. It can simulate both staring and spatial scan modes, and observations such as the transit and eclipse of exoplanets. Unlike many other instrument simulators, the focus of Wayne is on creating frames with realistic systematics in order to test the effectiveness of different data analysis methods in a variety of different scenarios. This approach is critical for method validation and optimising observing strategies. In this paper we describe Wayne's implementation for WFC3 in the near-infrared channel with the G141 and G102 grisms. We compare the simulations to real data, obtained for the exoplanet HD 209458b to verify the accuracy of the simulation. The simulated data described in this paper is available now at www.ucl.ac.uk/exoplanets/wayne/. We plan to release this tool to the community as open source software in the near future.