The SAO Exposure Time Calculator allows to estimate the results for the following instruments:
The current version only implements the GMACS instrument, Binospec and Hectospec will follow early 2024.
Configuring an observation consists of 3 steps:
Steps 1 and 2 allows, to test how the result would look like for the different instruments and to look at the results in parallel by opening the instrument configuration in different tabs and eventually drag them inot a new window.
Step 3 allows to vary parameters, to download the configuration and data tables for the plots. Any downloaded configuration can be edited and later uploaded on the home-page.
First and foremost: SAO-ETC is a free service in does not require registration. Thus no personal information is stored anywhere.
However, in order to do create the results we do store the source and observation information in a local database. This creates a source and observation ID which is part of navigating between the different pages. We do not regard this information as "secret" and identify them by integers others could guess and thus look at your results if they have any interest in doing so. If you want to prevent this, download the configuration if you want to keep it for later use, then press the "Clean up" button on the plot page. This will delete the database entries.