Preface

How to Use this Handbook

Handbook Structure

Typographic Conventions

Visual Cues

Comments

How to Use this Handbook

This handbook is designed to provide users with an introduction on how to understand, manipulate, and analyze data from the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), which was installed on-board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) during the 2009 Servicing Mission 4 (SM4). It is presented as an independent and self-contained document, referred to as the “WFC3 Data Handbook.”

Information about HST not specific to WFC3 is not discussed here. Users are referred to a companion volume, Introduction to the HST Data Handbooks, for more general information about the details of acquiring data from the HST archive, HST file formats, and general purpose software for displaying and processing HST data.

For detailed information about the instrument’s capabilities and design, and how to plan observations, users should refer to the WFC3 Instrument Handbook.