ESO Exposure Time Calculators

Exposure Time Calculators (ETCs) give astronomers the ability to predict the signal to noise ratio - or conversely, the exposure time to achieve it - under a set of assumptions about the performance of an instrument and the observing conditions.

Documentation and Tools

Frequently Asked Questions
Formula Book for signal and noise estimates
Characteristic curves for the various optical components
Retired Exposure Time Calculators
SkyCalc Sky Model Calculator web application

ESO Exposure Time Calculators

	Imaging	Spectroscopy
La Silla	EFOSC2 SUSI 2p2 WFI SOFI	EFOSC2^* HARPS FEROS SOFI
Paranal UT1	NACO FORS2	NACO^* FORS2^* KMOS^*
Paranal UT2		UVES UVES-FLAMES GIRAFFE^* X-SHOOTER
Paranal UT3	VISIR^* VIMOS SPHERE-IRDIS SPHERE-ZIMPOL	VISIR^* SPHERE-IFS VIMOS-MOS^* VIMOS-IFU^*
Paranal UT4	HAWK-I^*	SINFONI^* MUSE^*
Paranal VISTA	VIRCAM^*
Paranal VST	OmegaCAM
E-ELT	E-ELT	E-ELT
VLTI	VisCalc CalVin

February 26^th 2015 - version 6.0.0

A new unified convention for seeing and image quality introduced in all ETCs

The ETCs marked by * in the table above use a new advanced sky background model

The new sky model was already enabled in the previous version of the
KMOS, MUSE, VISIR-imaging and VISIR-spectroscopy ETCs

ESO Exposure Time Calculators

Documentation and Tools

February 26th 2015 - version 6.0.0

A new unified convention for seeing and image quality introduced in all ETCs

The ETCs marked by * in the table above use a new advanced sky background model

The NACO-imaging ETC has been adjusted to account for additional detector noise

February 26^th 2015 - version 6.0.0