Predicting UV sky for future UV missions

Abstract

Software simulators are now widely used in all areas of science, especially in application to astronomical missions: from instrument design to mission planning, and to data interpretation. We present a simulator to model the diffuse ultraviolet sky, where the different contributors are separately calculated and added together to produce a sky image of the size specified by the instrument requirements. Each of the contributors to the background, instrumental dark current, airglow, zodiacal light and diffuse Galactic light, depends on different factors. Airglow is dependent on the time of day; zodiacal light depends on the time of year, angle from the Sun and from the ecliptic; diffuse UV emission depends on the line of sight. To provide a full description of the sky along any line of sight, we have also added stars. The UV background light can dominate in many areas of the sky and severely limit viewing directions due to overbrightness. The simulator, available as a downloadable package and as a web-based tool, can be applied to preparation of real space missions and instruments. For demonstration,wepresent the example use for the two near-future UV missions: UVIT instrument on the Indian Astrosat mission and a new proposed wide-field (∼1000 square degrees) transient explorer satellite.