The JWST Resolved Stellar Populations Early Release Science Program. VII. Stress Testing the NIRCam Exposure Time Calculator

We empirically assess estimates from v3.0 of the James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam Exposure Time Calculator (ETC) using observations of resolved stars in Local Group targets taken as part of the Resolved Stellar Populations Early Release Science (ERS) Program. For bright stars, we find that (i) purely Poissonian estimates of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are in good agreement between the ETC and observations, but nonideal effects (e.g., flat-field uncertainties) are the current limiting factor in the photometric precision that can be achieved; (ii) source position offsets, relative to the detector pixels, have a large impact on the ETC saturation predictions and introducing subpixel dithers in the observation design can improve the saturation limits by up to ∼1 mag. For faint stars, for which the sky dominates the error budget, we find that the choice in the ETC extraction strategy (e.g., aperture size relative to point-spread function size) can affect the exposure time estimates by up to a factor of 5. We provide guidelines for configuring the ETC aperture photometry to produce SNR predictions in line with the ERS data. Finally, we quantify the effects of crowding on the SNRs over a large dynamic range in stellar density and provide guidelines for approximating the effects of crowding on SNRs predicted by the ETC.