Astronomical Image Simulation for Telescope and Survey Development
  We present the 'simage' software suite for the simulation of artificial
extragalactic images, based empirically around real observations of the Hubble
Ultra Deep Field (UDF). The simulations reproduce galaxies with realistic and
complex morphologies via the modeling of UDF galaxies as shapelets. Images can
be created in the B, V, i and z bands for both space- and ground-based
telescopes and instruments. The simulated images can be produced for any
required field size, exposure time, Point Spread Function (PSF), telescope
mirror size, pixel resolution, field star density, and a variety of detector
noise sources. It has the capability to create images with both a
pre-determined number of galaxies or one calibrated to the number counts of
pre-existing data sets such as the HST COSMOS survey. In addition, simple
options are included to add a known weak gravitational lensing (both shear and
flexion) to the simulated images. The software is available in Interactive Data
Language (IDL) and can be freely downloaded for scientific, developmental and
teaching purposes.
