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EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik

EP 2: Astrophysics II

EP 2.5: Talk

Monday, March 16, 2026, 17:15–17:30, KH 01.019

Differential Rendering of the Night Sky in Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes — •Gerrit Roellinghoff and Stefan Funk — Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics, Nikolaus-Fiebiger-Str. 2, 91058 Erlangen, Germany

Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes detect Cherenkov light against an irreducible optical background stemming from the night sky, e.g. from stars, airglow, zodiacal light and moonlight. We present a differentiable forward model for predicting this pixel-wise night sky background. The model includes single-scattering atmospheric radiative transfer and ray-traced instrument responses and spectrally models major contributors. Automatic differentiation enables gradient computation with respect to physical parameters such as aerosol optical depth and pointing offsets. This allows for efficient recovery of atmospheric and instrumental parameters from measured data, providing a new approach to instrument calibration for current and future IACT arrays.

Keywords: IACT; NSB; Differential; Simulation; JAX