Modelling the NIR sky background for IRIS/TMT

Dr. Tuan Do, Dunlap Fellow

Accurate sky background models are necessary for realistic predictions of telescope and instrument performance. However, there are significant variations to sky background measurements as well as models. Do will describe methods and challenges of modeling the sky background for the IRIS integral-field spectrograph for TMT. The model he describes currently includes OH lines, atmospheric emissivity, zodiacal light, instrument and telescope emissivity. Given that many telescopes and instruments also require background models, Do will describe a proposed effort to make publicly available the code to generate sky backgrounds.