Getting Started

Getting Started#

The basics#

The core of AnisoCADO is centred around the AnalyticalScaoPsf object. When created it runs a series of setup routines, including creating a PSF kernel based on the parameters it is passed during the initialisation. This original PSF kernel is valid for the on-sky coordinate of the natural guide star (NGS) used to drive the AO correction. It is the “optimal” PSF, and can always be called up using .psf_on_axis

The Strehl ratio of this kernel can be found by calling:

psf.strehl_ratio

The quality of the AO correction reduces as one moves away from the guide star. To sample the PSF at a specific distance from the guide star (i.e. off axis), use the method shift_off_axis(). AnisoCADO calculates a new PSF kernel for this coordinate, which is both returned by the function, and stored internally in .psf_latest

The returned kernel object is a numpy array. However AnisoCADO also produces a FITS HDU object from the psf_latest array when .hdu is called:

image_hdu = psf.hdu

image_hdu is an ImageHDU object, and can therefore be saved to disk using the standard astropy method .writeto:

image_hdu.writeto("new_scao_psf.fits")

Example: Off-axis Stehl ratios#

As an example of using the AnisoCADO API, let’s determine the Strehl ratio for different wavelengths as we move away from the (on-axis) guide star for the atmospheric profile EsoMedian

To plot the results

In-built atmospheric profiles#

AnisoCADO uses a 35-layer description of the atmospheric turbulence to generate the PSFs. By default AnisoCADO contains 3 sets of values for the turbulence, based on the ESO-258292 document. A turbulence profiles can be set by changing the parameter profile_name of the AnalyticalScaoPsf object:

psf = anisocado.AnalyticalScaoPsf(profile_name="EsoMedian")
# or
psf.profile_name = "EsoMedian"

Alternatively we could set out own atmospheric turbulence profile if we had our own Cn2 information:

psf.layerAltitude = [0.1, 5, 12]    # km
psf.Cn2h = [0.2, 0.5, 0.3]          # relative amount of turbulence

The main 3 atmospheric profiles provided are list in the table below:

Name

Conditions

Seeing

Zenith Distance

Wind Speed

Turbulence Profile

EsoQ1

Good

0.4

0

8.8

ESO Quartile 1

EsoMedian

Median

0.67

30

10

ESO Median

EsoQ4

Bad

1.0

60

13

ESO Quartile 4

Creating a field-varying PSF FITS file for SimCADO#

AnisoCADO is able to create PSF files in the format needed by SimCADO. The function anisocado.misc.make_simcado_psf_file handles most of the nitty-gritty. We just need to provide positions relative to the centre of the field of view where the PSF should be evaluated, and the wavelength at which this should be done.

To start the example, let’s create a list of coordinates at 45 degree intervals around concentric circles at increasing radii:

# include the centre of the FOV
coords = [(0, 0)]
radii = [1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 15, 23, 31]
for radius in :
    for ang in np.arange(0, 360, 45):
        coords += [(radius * np.cos(np.deg2rad(ang)),
                    radius * np.sin(np.deg2rad(ang)))]

To make life easier, this code in anisocado.misc:

anisocado.misc.field_positions_for_simcado_psf(radii=radii, theta=45)

Now we just need to decide which wavelengths to add. The function ´make_simcado_psf_file` expects the wavelengths to be in micron [um]. Let’s take the central wavelengths for the 5 major broad-band filters of MICADO:

waves = [0.87, 1.05, 1.25, 1.65, 2.15]

We generate a fits.HDUList object by passing these to list to make_simcado_psf_file:

from anisocado import misc
hdu = misc.make_simcado_psf_file(coords, waves)
hdu.writeto("my_new_fv_psf.fits")

By default AnisoCADO will create 512 x 512 pixel PSF kernels with a pixel size of 4mas. If we want to change this we can pass the parameters accepted by anisocado.psf.AnalyticalScaoPsf as kwargs:

hdu = misc.make_simcado_psf_file(coords, waves, pixelSize=0.0015, N=1024)

Setting atmospheric parameters#

A full list of attributes can be found in the docstring for AnalyticalScaoPsf. The ones most likely to be of interest to the casual user are given below. They can all be referenced and set in the following manner:

psf = anisocado.AnalyticalScaoPsf()
psf.profile_name = "EsoQ1"
psf.wavelength = 2.15    # um

Settable Attributes:

profile_name : str
    ['EsoQ1', 'EsoMedian', 'EsoQ4', 'oldEso', 'gendron']. Default: EsoMedian
    Names of specific atmospheric conditions for which presets exist.
    See :func:`psf_utils.get_atmospheric_turbulence`
N : int
    [pixel] Default: 512 pixel. Side-length of the kernel array
wavelength : float
    [um] Default: 2.15 um. Wavelength for which the PSF should be generated

The following parameters can be set by the user, but if they are left blank, AnisoCADO will fill them in based on the chosen profile_name. As with the normal attributes, there are many more derived attributes which the user can override. See AnalyticalScaoPsf.

Derived Attributes if not set by the user:

seeing : float
    [arcsec] Default: 0.67 arcsec. Set by profile_name, if not set by user
zenDist : float
    [degree] Default: 30 deg. Zenith distance. Set by profile_name, if not
    set by user
Contents