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Getting started

  • Installation
    • Requirements
    • Install from source (recommended)
    • Using a conda environment
    • Verify the installation
    • Running the test suite
    • Building the documentation locally
  • Quick start
    • The mental model
    • 1. Build a scene
    • 2. Create a simulation for a sensor
    • 3. Compute signal-to-noise
    • 4. Invert: exposure time for a target SNR
    • 5. Change parameters and recompute
    • 6. Check saturation
    • 7. Simulate a detector image and plot it
    • Where to go next

User guide

  • User guide
    • Concepts and architecture
      • The three building blocks
      • Constructing a simulation
      • Inspecting and updating parameters
      • Count rates and the electron budget
      • Accessor properties
    • Scenes, sources, and backgrounds
      • What goes in which slot
      • Building a scene
      • How an element is distributed on the detector
      • Hosts with a spatial profile: Sersic galaxies
      • Magnitude systems
      • Stellar and galaxy templates
      • Parametric source spectra
      • Rebuilding a parametric spectrum with update
      • Backgrounds
      • Working with scene elements directly
    • Signal-to-noise and exposure time
      • What goes into the SNR
      • Image-based SNR (the default)
      • Exposure time for a target SNR
      • Multiple reads (n_reads)
      • The analytic Airy SNR
    • PSFs and image simulation
      • PSF models
      • The wavelength the PSF is rendered at
      • Automatic PSF selection by focus level
      • Rendering a PSF on its own
      • Simulating an image
      • Grid size and oversampling
      • Telescope jitter
    • Saturation
      • The peak pixel
      • The saturation flag
      • Saturation in the image and SNR paths
    • Plotting
      • The house style
      • The example image
      • The image plots
      • Two ways to call them
      • Convenience methods on SimulatedImage
      • Return values and embedding
      • Filter throughput
      • Curves from a Simulation
      • Objects that plot themselves

Tutorials

  • Tutorials
    • Getting started with the WCC ETC
      • 1. Build a scene
      • 2. Build a simulation for a sensor and filter
      • 3. Compute the SNR
      • 4. Inspect and change parameters
      • 5. Check what you actually set up
      • Summary
      • Where to go next
    • Saturation flagging
      • What the detector can hold
      • What saturation looks like
      • Onset vs exposure time
      • The ceiling depends on the sensor
      • Summary
    • from_sensorfilter: the PSF follows the filter
      • 1. Label to PSF
      • 2. What the auto-selected PSFs look like
      • 3. Defocus and filter width
      • 4. Guards
      • Summary
    • PSF simulator and PSF-aware SNR
      • 1. PSF gallery
      • 2. A full detector image
      • 3. Pointing jitter
      • 4. Aperture size, defocus, and the optimum
      • 5. Bokeh backend
      • Summary
    • n_reads and the exposure-time inverses
      • 1. How long to reach a target SNR
      • 2. The cost of more reads
      • 3. Reads as a saturation escape hatch
      • Summary
    • Parametric source spectra
      • 1. Blackbody
      • 2. Flat
      • 3. Power law
      • 4. Emission lines
      • 5. Driving the ETC
      • 6. update() rebuilds the spectrum
      • 7. Normalization bandpass
      • Summary
    • Sersic-profile hosts: a transient on a galaxy
      • 1. What the host looks like on the detector
      • 2. The two normalizations
      • 3. Nuclear vs offset transient
      • 4. How compact is the host?
      • 5. One charge budget
      • Summary

Reference

  • API reference
    • Top-level public API
    • Modules
      • Simulation
      • Scenes (wcc_etc.scene)
      • Sensor
      • Telescope
      • PSF and image simulation (wcc_etc.psfsim)
      • Extended sources (wcc_etc.extended)
      • Airy PSF utilities (wcc_etc.airy)
      • Radial profiles (wcc_etc.radial_data)
      • Spectral weighting (wcc_etc.spectral)
      • Light curves (wcc_etc.lightcurve)
      • Plotting (wcc_etc.plotting)
      • Astrophysics helpers (wcc_etc.astro)
      • I/O and configuration (wcc_etc.io)
  • Configuration and sensors
    • Sensor strings
    • The configuration files
    • Example: the Sony detector config
    • Example: the telescope config
    • Overriding configuration at runtime
    • Reading configs programmatically
  • Changelog
    • v0.1.0 (2026-10-12)
      • Earlier in this cycle
      • H-alpha filters
      • Plotting and PSF introspection
      • Behaviour change
      • Initial highlights
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