PandExo 3.0

Changes between Pandeia 2 -> Pandeia 3:

New MIRI gain value has been added and introduces a very small difference in the calculation (see figure):

Changes to interface (by Michael Zhang @ideasrule):

1. The "edit" functionality works now. The user can now easily change one parameter and re-run the calculation. Files to upload have to be re-selected because Javascript security features forbid uploading files without explicit user consent.
2. Pretty much every field of the form is now validated before submission. Instead of letting the user submit and then crashing, forcing the user to fill out the whole form from scratch, it refuses to submit
3. Added "Edit Calculation" and "Dashboard" buttons to the View page for easy navigation
4. Added "New Calculation" button to Dashboard for convenience
5. "View" page now allows user to download the simulated observations + errors in text format
6. JWST View page now shows number of partially and fully saturated pixels vs. wavelength, allowing user to know which wavelengths are saturated
7. Default values now populated for many text fields and dropdown lists, partially because they're common choices, partially to make it impossible to submit without choosing a dropdown option

Bug fixes (by Michael Zhang @ideasrule):

1. The temperatures in the Fortney grid are now sorted
2. The form is no longer reset when user resolves a target name
3. Files are now closed after being opened

Release 2.0

Merge to incorporate Pandeia 2.0.

This is a major update that should be done before submitting Cycle 2 JWST proposals. The figure shows expected differences in group number calculations and precision updates.

Considerations for Cycle 2 Planning:

The discussion in Espinoza et al. 2022, Section 4.1, details how PandExo currently compares against available data (HAT-P-14 b). For the case of HAT-P-14b, which has a high-impact parameter, PandExo is currently producing error bars that are roughly 20% better than expected. This error comes from PandExo's assumption of a flat-bottomed transit, opposed to a limb-darkened star. This effect, which is planet-system dependent, will be incorporated in Release 3.0, and will not be available for Cycle 2. Therefore, users should consider the system’s impact parameter when determining the number of transits required to obtain a desired precision.

With regards to the group number, no additional adjustments need to be made. For suggestions on what saturation fullwell to use for each instrument, please refer to JDox (see general recommendations).

Major installation changes:

• Updated pandeia requires the download of throughput files. These new instructions have been added to the installation docs: https://natashabatalha.github.io/PandExo/installation.html

Release 1.5

No changes in this release will impact users noise calculations. Changes include:

• Compatibility with Pandeia data release 1.5: https://stsci.app.box.com/v/pandeia-refdata-v1p5
• Ability to resolve target in the web app, and then edit fields in the planet (fixes issue for planets with missing data fields)
• Ability to suppress print out statements
• Updates to HST simulations
• Improvements/bug fixes to justplotit.jwst_1d_spec

Pandeia/PandExo V1.4

There has been a new Pandeia data release for 1.4 here. PandExo V1.4 is compatible with this release. It is important to know that this new data release will not be back compatible with earlier versions of Pandeia or PandExo.

Additional major capabilities added to 1.4:

• Ability to query planet info directly. Checkout new notebooks for JWST and HST.
• Updated front end
• Updated HST to improve accuracy
• Added ramping effects for HST (Implemented by Yifan Zhou: [email protected])

Pandeia/PandExo v1.3 Release

Moving forward Pandexo releases will coincide with Pandeia releases.

Major Updates

• This new release includes major updates to background noise calculations. There are now two options for background noise (see Adjust Background Level in the tutorials).

• Users can either set zodimin or ecliptic as the location, and then set low, medium, or high based on what they expect. This is particularly important for MIRI LRS when looking at smaller planets. Calculations can expect to differ from 10-40 ppm if planet is in ecliptic at a high background level.

• Users will have to download the new Pandeia reference data

Minor Updates

• Added NIRISS Order 2 tutorial for users who have inquired about how to do that
• Minor adjustments to web development

Starting PandExo Releases

Working towards more official ways to do PandExo releases (dev branche, builds with travis-ci, tested conda builds, etc).

Trying to work towards automatic conda builds with travis-ci but am running into some Pandeia bottlenecks. For now there is a py3.6 build on my channel:

conda install -c natashabatalha pandexo.engine

But you will have to install these separately:

pip install pandeia.engine batman-package

From now on, requests for small changes will be added to dev and new PyPi or conda builds will occur less frequently