I would like to use the “QSONumberCountsMetric” from the metric analysis framework (MAF) and normalize this number by the sky area.
For example, for the COSMOS deep-drilling field (DDF). I find this metric from the website: baseline_v4.0_10yrs (baseline v4.0).
However, since the DDF pointings are dithered, I would like to understand whether this number should be normalized to the area of the telescope field-of-view (9.6 deg2) or to the area swept by the dither pattern (rough visual estimate yields ~18.6 deg2).
This would be trivial to estimate from the already plotted maps, but it seems that no information on the scale is given.
I see - you’re correct that no scale or total area is given. The number reported in the table below is the number integrated over the healpixel grid used in the calculation, and we haven’t reported the total area (we should think of a way to do this). I think this grid area may vary between simulation evaluations – in newer maf runs, we’re putting a tighter limit on the outer radius of the grid baseline_v5.0.0_10yrs
I’m not entirely certain what you gain from normalizing by the area though … are you trying to see if the estimated QSO number matches another luminosity function?
The LF used for the input to the simulation is derived here - GitHub - lsst-sims/create_NQSO_tables: Create tables used to calculate number densities of QSOs
(and I’m just realizing I may have failed to fold the latest update here back into the input data used in the MAF metric calculation, so we will update that as well! )