NICMOS STScI Analysis Newsletter 18
June 1999
CONTENTS:
- NICMOS NEWS
+ New NICMOS Information on the WWW
+ NICPROTO Package Available
+ Paper Products in Electronic Format
- WFC3 Filter Workshop
- RECENT PREPRINTS
- APPENDIX: NICMOS CONTACTS
============================================================================
NICMOS NEWS
-----------
New NICMOS Information on the WWW
---------------------------------
As with all Space Telescope instruments, the NICMOS home page is updated
regularly. This page can be found from the STSCI home page
(http://www.stsci.edu) by following the "Instruments" link.
Since the last STAN, the following ISRs have been published:
ISR-99-003:
NICMOS optical aberrations: coma and astigmatism
(A. Suchkov, G. Galas, June 10, 1999)
Since the last STAN, the following items have been published:
NICMOS Handbook version 3.0 -- June 1999
This is the primary source of information on the NICMOS
characteristics and expected performance in Cycle 10. It is
currently available in PDF format only.
NICPROTO Package Available
--------------------------
by Howard Bushouse
As announced in the NICMOS STAN-017 (March 1999), the STScI NICMOS
and Science Software Groups have begun developing a set of data
reduction and analysis tasks to give observers the ability to
correct their NICMOS data for some of the more common image
anomalies. The first version of this set of tasks is now available
as an IRAF add-on package, called "nicproto". The package is
distributed as a Unix tar file, which can be downloaded from the
STSDAS web pages at http://ra.stsci.edu/STSDAS.html. The tar file can
be accessed directly at ftp://ra.stsci.edu/pub/nicproto/nicproto.tar.
All of the tasks in the nicproto package are currently written
as IRAF CL scripts and should be considered prototypes. Future
releases will included enhanced capabilities, additional tasks, and
the conversion of some of the tasks from CL scripts to native tasks
in order to improve their performance. The more mature versions of
the tasks will be included in the standard NICMOS package in future
releases of STSDAS.
Detailed information about each task can be found in the on-line
help pages included with the package. Briefly, the nicproto package
currently contains two main tasks - biaseq and pedsky - which are useful
for removing problems in NICMOS images that arise due to drifting
detector bias levels. Note that the current version of the pedsky
task will only work well for images of sparse fields. Algorithms
tailored for crowded fields and/or extended sources will be included
in future versions. The nicpipe task provides a convenient means
of processing datasets through various substeps of the pipeline
calibration program calnica; such partial processing is necessary
for using the biaseq and pedsky tasks. The remaining tasks are useful
for displaying and plotting information from NICMOS MultiAccum
datasets. The package menu is shown below.
biaseq - Equalize bias levels in MultiAccum readouts.
mosdisplay - Display a mosaic of MultiAccum image readouts.
nicpipe - Process images through various stages of CALNICA
pedsky - Subtract pedestal and sky from NICMOS images.
pstack - Plot a stack of MultiAccum pixel values.
pstats - Plot a stack of MultiAccum image statistics.
sampinfo - Print sample information for a MultiAccum image.
Paper Products in Electronic Format
-----------------------------------
D. Christian and the HST Archive Branch
The archive branch, in an effort to save resources, is planning to
provide DADS paper products in electronic format only. Paper
product content remains the same, but paper products are now converted
into Adobe Portable Document format (PDF). As done previously, PDF files
summarize the observations made by a particular observer during one
"Science Mission Schedule" (i.e., SMS) week. The PDF files must be
viewed using the ADOBE Acrobat Reader, which can be obtained from our
page if it's not currently available from your WEB browser.
PDF documents can be retrieved from:
http://archive.stsci.edu/hst/pdf_home.html
or directly from the search page at:
http://archive.stsci.edu/hst/pdf_search.html
Users have several options with which to search for PDF files,
including: proposal number, PI last name, target name, data set name
and observation date. Help is available on the possible search
fields. Files are password protected (unless the proposal is a
calibration program) and users will need their archive name and
password to access documents. This interface is not intended for
general archive users but specifically for PIs of HST programs. The
archive plans to stop printing paper products on August 1, but will
still provide paper hard copies in case of special need.
Please direct any comments or questions to archive@stsci.edu.
=============================================================================
WFC3 Filter Workshop
--------------------
by Alex Storrs
STScI and the WFC3 Science Oversight Committee will be hosting
a workshop at the Space Telescope Science Institute on July 14, 1999
to discuss what filters might be included in the upcoming Wide
Field Camera 3. WFC3 will replace WFPC2 in the radial instrument
bay. It is currently planned to have a near-IR side, good to
about 1.8 microns, with ten (or more) filters. Please visit
the WFC3 website for further details.
http://www.stsci.edu/ftp/instrument_newss/WFC3/wfc3.html
The UV/VIS filter set will probably follow on the current WFPC2 set,
with some variations. The NIR filter set is as yet undefined. This
workshop is your chance to provide input to the WFC3 SOC on NIR filters.
Please check the website and provide input, especially if you can't make
the meeting.
=============================================================================
RECENT PREPRINTS
----------------
We draw your attention to these papers, based on NICMOS data, that
will appear in the next few months. This list includes all preprints
received by the STScI Library not yet published in the journals.
Please remember to include our Library in your preprint distribution list.
DEUTSCH, E.W.; MARGON, B.; ANDERSON, S.F.; WACHTER, S.;
GOSS, W.M. "Infrared Candidates for the Intense Galactic
X-ray Source GX 17+2" ApJ accepted
BOKER, T.; CALZETTI, D.; SPARKS, W.; AXON, D.; BERGERON,
L.E.; BUSHOUSE, H.; COLINA, L.; DAOU, D.; GILMORE, D.;
HOLFELTZ, S.; MACKENTY, J.; MAZZUCA, L.; MONROE, B.;
NAJITA, J.; NOLL, K.; NOTA, A.; RITCHIE, C.; SCHULTZ, A.;
SOSEY, M.; STORRS, A.; SUCHKOV, A. "The NICMOS Snapshot
Survey of Nearby Galaxies" ApJS accepted
http://www.stsci.edu/science/preprints/prep1337/prep1337.html
============================================================================
APPENDIX: NICMOS Contacts
-------------------------
Any questions about the scheduling of your observations should be
addressed to your Program Coordinator. Post-Observation questions can
be addressed to your Contact Scientist. If you do not know who these
persons are, you can find the information on the WWW at
http://www.stsci.edu/public/propinfo.html.
Analysis, STSDAS or any other HST-related questions can also be
addressed to help@stsci.edu.
============================================================================
To subscribe or unsubscribe send a message to majordomo@stsci.edu with
the Subject: line blank and the following in the body:
[un]subscribe nicmos_news
============================================================================
Comments, questions, suggestions, etc. can be e-mailed to help@stsci.edu.
============================================================================
The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated by the Association of
Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract
NAS5-26555.
============================================================================
