An Exposure Time Calculator (ETC) calculates the required exposure time of an astronomical target, based on the instrument characteristics, the target properties, and the observational parameters, and it’s a key tool in the development of a new facility and its science.
An ETC is a crucial element in an observatory’s data workflow and for optimising the telescope time. During instrument development, it is essential to provide feedback on the various options considered by each work package, and for all science teams to determine how feasible their scientific objectives are.
The WST ETC covers both the Multi-Object Spectroscopic (MOS) and the Integral Field Spectroscopic (IFS) modes.
The WST ETC generates reliable simulations representing the various WST facility instruments and their operational modes, and provides either the achievable signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for a given observing setup or the total exposure time required (i.e., the combination of detector integration time, DIT, and number of integrations/exposures, NDIT).
The WST ETC backend is written in python and is available via a web frontend. The v1.0 of the ETC is available at this URL.
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