English

ASTRO-F/FIS Observing Simulation: Detection Limits for Point Sources

Astrophysics 2025-08-26 v3 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We describe the observing simulation software FISVI (FIS Virtual Instrument), which was developed for the Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) that will be on the Japanese infrared astronomy mission ASTRO-F. The FISVI has two purposes: one is to check the specifications and performances of the ASTRO-F/FIS as a whole; the other is to prepare input data sets for the data analysis softwares prior to launch. In the FISVI, special care was taken by introducing the "Compiled PSF (Point Spread Function)" to optimise inevitable, but time-consuming, convolution processes. With the Compiled PSF, we reduce the computation time by an order of magnitude. The photon and readout noises are included in the simulations. We estimate the detection limits for point sources from the simulation of virtual patches of the sky mostly consisting of distant galaxies. We studied the importance of source confusion for simple power-law models for N(>S), the number of sources brighter than S. We found that source confusion plays a dominant role in the detection limits only for models with rapid luminosity evolution for the galaxy counts, the evolution of which is suggested by recent observations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0204377,
  title  = {ASTRO-F/FIS Observing Simulation: Detection Limits for Point Sources},
  author = {Woong-Seob Jeong and Soojong Pak and Hyung Mok Lee and Takao Nakagawa and Jungjoo Sohn and Insun Ahn and Issei Yamamura and Masaru Watanabe and Mitsunobu Kawada and Hiroshi Shibai},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0204377},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

27 pages, 35 postscript figures, LaTex, gzipped tar file, accepted for publication in PASJ (High resolution version is available from http://astro.snu.ac.kr/~jeongws/preprints/fisvi_pasj.pdf), some changes; added figures, revised text

R2 v1 2026-07-22T08:09:52.906Z