Depths for DR1 and more

Hi @xPecax, thanks so much for posting that question here.

Usually when I want the 5-sigma limiting magnitudes for any year of LSST, I estimate them using Equation 6 in Section 3.2 of Ivezić et al. (2019).

The t_vis factor, the cumulative exposure time, can be estimated for any year based on the expectation that after 10 years, the mean number of visits will be 56, 80, 184, 184, 160, 160 in ugrizy filters (Table 1 of that paper). I generally assume they will all be 30-second visits, and that they will divided equally among years, such that there would be 5, 8, 18, 18, 16, 16 visits after year 1. I think the other factors in Equation 6 are all provided in that paper.

However, see also the updated estimates for the filter visit distribution from more recent simulations of the LSST observing strategy, i.e., Table 4 in the Rubin Project Science Tech Note 054, which are 56 74 184 187 166 171.

If you have any more questions please reply in this thread. Otherwise, if that’s the information you were looking for, please let me know (or you can mark this reply post as the solution for this topic).