Purpose: Collapses IRAC subarray cubes into two-dimensional images and provides a MOPEX namelist to make subarray mosaic images.

Author: Sean Carey (SSC/IPAC)
Date Contributed: 16 May 2007
System Requirements: IDL

This software is not considered part of the pipeline and no installation support from IRSA should be expected. We are however very interested in your feedback in order to improve or replace the algorithm and are glad to work with you in test cases and analysis. Questions and comments should be directed to the Helpdesk.

Information and Download

Download irac_subcube_collapse.pro (PRO, 9 KB)

To mosaic IRAC subarray data, the BCDs (which are image cubes of 64 frames) need to be transformed into two-dimensional images. MOPEX can then be run to make a final mosaic. This process is described more explicitly in this memo (Plain Text, 3 KB). This IDL procedure, irac_subcube_collapse.pro, can be run to collapse the 3D subarray data cube to a two-dimensional image is available. In general, the two-dimensional versions of subarray BCDs will not need outlier rejection as that is done through suitable averaging of the 64 frames in each cube. Here is a template namelist mosaic_subarray_basic.nl (NL, 2 KB) for the SSC mosaicker, MOPEX, that mosaics without outlier rejection.

An example of using the IDL procedure and template name list to make a small subarray mosaic (channel 1 image of Sgr A* from AORid 12074752, pid 3677, PI S. Stolovy). The three panels are the mosaic, coverage map and uncertainty image, from left to right.