Simulating image coaddition with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: II. Analysis of the simulated images and implications for weak lensing

Abstract

One challenge for applying current weak lensing analysis tools to the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is that individual images will be undersampled. Our companion paper presented an initial application of I -an algorithm that builds an optimal mapping from input to output pixels to reconstruct a fully sampled combined image -on the Roman image simulations. In this paper, we measure the output noise power spectra, identify the sources of the major features in the power spectra, and show that simple analytic models that ignore sampling effects underestimate the power spectra of the coadded noise images. We compute the moments of both idealized injected stars and fully simulated stars in the coadded images, and their 1-and 2-point statistics. We show that the idealized injected stars have root-mean-square ellipticity errors (1 − 6) × 10 −4 per component depending on the band; the correlation functions are ≥ 2 orders of magnitude below requirements, indicating that the image combination step itself is using a small fraction of the overall Roman 2nd moment error budget, although the 4th moments are larger and warrant further investigation. The stars in the simulated sky images, which include blending and chromaticity effects, have correlation functions near the requirement level (and below the requirement level in a wide-band image constructed by stacking all 4 filters). We evaluate the noise-induced biases in the ellipticities of injected stars, and explain the resulting trends with an analytical model. We conclude by enumerating the next steps in developing an image coaddition pipeline for Roman.

Spot-based measurement of the brighter-fatter effect on a Roman Space Telescope H4RG detector and comparison with flat-field data

“…This approach assumes that a BFE correction derived from uniform illumination is equally applicable to focused light. For space-based measurements, current work (see, e.g., Hirata et al [30]) is in progress to demonstrate that shear measurement algorithms, such as Metadetection [31,32], can achieve the requisite accuracy with undersampled PSFs from space (using software such as IMCOM [33,34] to accurately reconstruct the PSF). The present study contributes to a deeper comprehension of the BFE in H4RG detectors that will be utilized for weak-lensing science with the Roman Space Telescope.…”

Point spread function modelling for astronomical telescopes: a review focused on weak gravitational lensing studies

“…Rowe et al (2011) proposed a linear coaddition method coined IMCOM to obtain a super-resolved image from several undersampled images. Hirata et al (2023) later studied the use of IMCOM on simulations (Troxel et al, 2023) from the Roman Space Telescope, while a companion paper by Yamamoto et al (2023) explored its implications for weak-lensing analyses. Ngolè et al (2015) proposed a super-resolution method coined SPRITE targeting the Euclid mission based on a sparse regularisation technique.…”