CUTE data simulator and reduction pipeline

A. G. Sreejith; Luca Fossati; Manfred Steller; Brian T. Fleming; Kevin France

doi:10.1117/12.2309922

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6 July 2018 CUTE data simulator and reduction pipeline

A. G. Sreejith, Luca Fossati, Manfred Steller, Brian T. Fleming, Kevin France

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Proceedings Volume 10699, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2018: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray; 1069932 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2309922
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2018, Austin, Texas, United States

Abstract

The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) is a 6U NASA CubeSat carrying a low-resolution (R ≈ 3000), near-ultraviolet (255 – 330 nm) spectrograph fed by a rectangular primary Cassegrain. CUTE, is planned for launch in spring 2020 and it will monitor transiting extra-solar planets to study atmospheric escape. We present here the CUTE data simulator, which is a versatile tool easily adaptable to any other mission performing singleslit spectroscopy and carrying on-board a CCD detector. We complemented the data simulator with a data reduction pipeline capable of performing a rough reduction of the simulated data. This pipeline will then be updated once the final CUTE data reduction pipeline will be fully developed. We further briefly discuss our plans for the development of a CUTE data reduction pipeline. The data simulator will be used to inform the target selection, improve the preliminary signal-to-noise calculator, test the impact on the data of deviations from the nominal instrument characteristics, identify the best spacecraft orientation for the observation of each target and construct synthetic data to train the science team in the data analysis prior to launch.

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A. G. Sreejith, Luca Fossati, Manfred Steller, Brian T. Fleming, and Kevin France "CUTE data simulator and reduction pipeline", Proc. SPIE 10699, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2018: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 1069932 (6 July 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2309922

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