STSDAS Documentation

Much of the documentation for STSDAS tasks resides in various cookbooks and handbooks. A good introduction to using IRAF and STSDAS to analyze HST data is the HST Data Handbook , especially the Introduction. More specialized information can be found in the data handbooks of the individual instruments:

• ACS: Advanced Camera for Surveys
  PDF version


• FGS: Fine Guidance Sensors
  PDF version


• NICMOS: Near Infrared Camera and Multi Object Spectrometer
  PDF version


• STIS: Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph
  PDF version


• WFPC2: Wide Field Planetary Camera 2
  PDF version

Other resources include:

• The STSDAS Site Manager's Installation Guide and Reference. (Note that the information in this guide is still current, even though it is labled as Version 3.9. There have been no changes to the installation procedure.)


• The STScI User's Guide to the FITS kernel provides a read online guide.


• The NOAO FITS userguide provides a dowloadable PostScript file.


• The Dither Handbook. This provides a cookbook-style manual for analyzing dithered HST data.


• The Synphot Users Guide. This gives a guide to using Synphot, a package that simulates photometric and spectroscopic data, allowing users to predict count rates, exposure times and signal-to-noise ratios.


• The SYNPHOT Data User's Guide. User's Guide for the data-driven aspects of Synphot, describes obsmodes and keywords for HST instruments and supported groundbased photometric systems.


• STSDAS Programmer's Documentation, a collection of manuals for programmers.


• The IRAF doc page.


• The IGI Manual. IGI (Interactive Graphics Interpreter) is an STSDAS task for drawing high quality data plots.