Interactive planning tool

Size your array,
see your survey.

Pick a telescope model, lay out an array, and choose an overlap, exposure time, and revisit cadence — the simulator computes the resulting field of view and tile plan exactly the way the project's tiling engine will.

Telescope model
Array width (columns) 3
Array height (rows) 2
Tile overlap
Exposure per tile
Revisit loop length
Tile grid per loop (columns × rows) —
Total imaging time 7 h

Imaging Report

Simulated — not a live plan
Telescope
Model —
Single-scope FOV —
Optics —
Array (inner grid)
Layout —
Array footprint (W × H) —
Array footprint area —
Array field of view diagram, scaled to the selected layout and overlap
Nightly cycle (outer grid)
Tiles per loop —
Revisit cadence —
Survey footprint (W × H, illustrative) — Complete tile grid in the chosen shape; the real shape depends on sky rotation
Survey footprint area — Overlap between tiles counted once
Outer grid diagram: the array steps through the tiles of one loop in a serpentine path, with the covered sky area in degrees

One loop of the outer grid, animated with an start time of 21:00 — every tile is one pointing of the whole array. The dimensions show the extent of sky covered per loop.

Time series (over the night)
Total imaging time —
Revisits per tile —
Total images (whole array) —
All fields of view are manufacturers' stacked imaging field of view (not the wider finder/framing view) and are for planning purposes — real values can vary slightly unit to unit. In the real system, field of view is always reported by the connected device itself, never hand-typed into a config file.
These are ideal numbers assuming zero overhead between tiles. In practice, slewing and settling eat into each tile's time slot — a "5 minute" (300 s) tile is more realistically 240–270 s of actual exposure once slew/settle time is subtracted, so real tile counts, revisit cadence, and total image counts will be somewhat lower than shown here. The outer-grid region size is also just illustrative: it lays the tiles out as a complete grid in the shape you choose, but doesn't model how the sky rotates over the night or altitude limits — the real shape of a survey region is a planning decision that depends on both.
How it's calculated

Same math as the tiling engine

The simulator mirrors the inner-grid / outer-grid model described in the project overview — nothing here is arbitrary.

Inner grid — array footprint

Each telescope's field of view steps by FOV × (1 − overlap) from its neighbor. The array's combined footprint is (N − 1) × step + FOV along each axis.

step_x = Wfov × (1 − o)
array_W = (cols − 1) × step_x + Wfov

Outer grid — tiles per loop

The number of sky tiles that fit in one revisit loop is the loop length divided by the exposure time per tile, rounded down.

tiles_per_loop = floor(loop_minutes / exposure_minutes)

Outer grid — covered sky area

Neighbouring outer tiles step by the array footprint times (1 − overlap), so they overlap slightly. The survey footprint area is the area of the union of all tiles in one loop — overlapping strips are counted only once. For a completely filled grid this is simply its width times its height.

outer_step_x = array_W × (1 − o)
outer_W = (outer_cols − 1) × outer_step_x + array_W
area = |⋃ tiles|  (= outer_W × outer_H for a full grid)