Precision simulation of ground-based lensing data using observations from space

Understand

Current and upcoming wide-field, ground-based, broad-band imaging surveys promise to address a wide range of outstanding problems in galaxy formation and cosmology.

• Several such uses of ground-based data, especially weak gravitational lensing, require highly precise measurements of galaxy image statistics with careful correction for the effects of the point-spread function (PSF).
• In this paper, we introduce the SHERA (SHEar Reconvolution Analysis) software to simulate ground-based imaging data with realistic galaxy morphologies and observing conditions, starting from space-based data (from COSMOS, the Cosmological Evolution Survey) and accounting for the effects of the space-based PSF.
• This code simulates ground-based data, optionally with a weak lensing shear applied, in a model-independent way using a general Fourier space formalism.