Welcome to PlatoSim’s documentation!¶
The PLATO Simulator (PlatoSim) is an end-to-end software tool, designed to perform realistic simulations of the expected observations of the PLATO mission. Our simulator simulates time series of CCD images by including models of the stellar field, the spacecraft systematics, the jitter movements of the spacecraft, the camera optics, the CCD and its electronics, and all important natural sources of noise.
PlatoSim is a highly versatile tool ideal to model the complex interplay of various noise sources needed for the performance assessment and design study of any space-based mission. PlatoSim is widely used by the PLATO Mission Consortium (PMC) to also conduct scientific studies related to the core and complimentary program of the mission. Being an indispensable tool in the preparation of the PLATO mission, we hope that you find PlatoSim a useful tool in your research. Please consult:
- All information needed to install and update PlatoSim is described in the sections: Installation and Running PlatoSim. Please, follow these instructions carefully before running PlatoSim.
- The PlatoSim software package includes a Python interface (with a suite of tools) which we explain in our Python tutorials. We highly recommend to use this interface to avoid sudden software errors when updating your code (since our Python interface is kept backward compatible with previous software versions).
- Particularly relevant for simulating multi-camera imagette time series or light curves, the PlatoSim toolkit called PLATOnium may be of interest.
- In case of questions or problems, see our Troubleshooting section.
- For more information about the building blocks of PlatoSim, consult the Architecture section and the PlatoSim3 paper.