2. Data Reduction with “reduce”

This chapter will guide you on reducing Flamingos-2 imaging data using command line tools. In this example we reduce a Flamingos-2 observation of a star and distant galaxy field. The observation is a simple dither-on-target sequence. Just open a terminal to get started.

While the example cannot possibly cover all situations, it will help you get acquainted with the reduction of Flamingos-2 data with DRAGONS. We encourage you to look at the Tips and Tricks and Issues and Limitations chapters to learn more about F2 data reduction.

DRAGONS installation comes with a set of useful scripts that are used to reduce astronomical data. The most important script is called reduce, which is extensively explained in the Recipe System Users Manual. It is through that command that a DRAGONS reduction is launched.

For this tutorial, we will be also using other support tools like:

2.1. The dataset

If you have not already, download and unpack the tutorial’s data package. Refer to Downloading the tutorial datasets for the links and simple instructions.

The dataset specific to this example is described in:

Here is a copy of the table for quick reference.

Science
S20131121S0075-083
Y-band, 120 s
Darks
S20131121S0369-375
2 s, short darks for BPM
S20131120S0115-120
S20131121S0010
S20131122S0012
S20131122S0438-439
120 s, for science data
Flats
S20131129S0320-323
20 s, Lamp On, Y-band
S20131126S1111-116
20 s, Lamp Off, Y-band

2.2. Set up the Local Calibration Manager

DRAGONS comes with a local calibration manager that uses the same calibration association rules as the Gemini Observatory Archive. This allows reduce to make requests to a local light-weight database for matching processed calibrations when needed to reduce a dataset.

Let’s set up the local calibration manager for this session.

In ~/.geminidr/, create or edit the configuration file rsys.cfg as follow:

[calibs]
standalone = True
database_dir = ${path_to_my_data}/f2img_tutorial/playground

This simply tells the system where to put the calibration database, the database that will keep track of the processed calibrations we are going to send to it.

Note

The tilde (~) in the path above refers to your home directory. Also, mind the dot in .geminidr.

Then initialize the calibration database:

caldb init

That’s it! It is ready to use! You can check the configuration and confirm the setting with caldb config.

You can add processed calibrations with caldb add <filename> (we will later), list the database content with caldb list, and caldb remove <filename> to remove a file from the database (it will not remove the file on disk). For more the details, check the Recipe System Local Calibration Manager documentation.

2.3. Check files

For this example, all the raw files we need are in the same directory called ../playdata/. Let us learn a bit about the data we have.

Ensure that you are in the playground directory and that the conda environment that includes DRAGONS has been activated.

Let us call the command tool typewalk:

$ typewalk -d ../playdata/

directory:  /path_to_my_files/f2img_tutorial/playdata
     S20131120S0115.fits ............... (AT_ZENITH) (AZEL_TARGET) (CAL) (DARK) (F2) (GEMINI) (NON_SIDEREAL) (RAW) (SOUTH) (UNPREPARED)
     ...
     S20131121S0075.fits ............... (F2) (GEMINI) (IMAGE) (RAW) (SIDEREAL) (SOUTH) (UNPREPARED)
     ...
     S20131121S0369.fits ............... (AT_ZENITH) (AZEL_TARGET) (CAL) (DARK) (F2) (GEMINI) (NON_SIDEREAL) (RAW) (SOUTH) (UNPREPARED)
     ...
     S20131126S1111.fits ............... (AZEL_TARGET) (CAL) (F2) (FLAT) (GCALFLAT) (GCAL_IR_OFF) (GEMINI) (IMAGE) (LAMPOFF) (NON_SIDEREAL) (RAW) (SOUTH) (UNPREPARED)
     ...
     S20131129S0320.fits ............... (AT_ZENITH) (AZEL_TARGET) (CAL) (F2) (FLAT) (GCALFLAT) (GCAL_IR_ON) (GEMINI) (IMAGE) (LAMPON) (NON_SIDEREAL) (RAW) (SOUTH) (UNPREPARED)
     ...
Done DataSpider.typewalk(..)

This command will open every FITS file within the directory passed after the -d flag (recursively) and will print an unsorted table with the file names and the associated tags. For example, calibration files will always have the CAL tag. Flat images will always have the FLAT tag. Dark files will have the DARK tag. This means that we can start getting to know a bit more about our data set just by looking at the tags. The output above was trimmed for presentation.

2.4. Create file lists

This data set contains science and calibration frames. For some programs, it could have different observed targets and different exposure times depending on how you like to organize your raw data.

The DRAGONS data reduction pipeline does not organize the data for you. You have to do it. DRAGONS provides tools to help you with that.

The first step is to create lists that will be used in the data reduction process. For that, we use dataselect. Please, refer to the dataselect documentation for details regarding its usage.

2.4.1. Two lists for the darks

Our data set contains two sets of DARK files: some 120-seconds darks matching the science data and some 2-second darks to create the bad pixel mask (BPM). If you did not know the exposure times of the darks, you could send the dataselect results to the showd command line tool as follow to get the information:

$ dataselect --tags DARK ../playdata/*.fits | showd -d exposure_time
-----------------------------------------------
filename                          exposure_time
-----------------------------------------------
../playdata/S20131120S0115.fits           120.0
../playdata/S20131120S0116.fits           120.0
../playdata/S20131120S0117.fits           120.0
...
../playdata/S20131121S0369.fits             2.0
../playdata/S20131121S0370.fits             2.0
../playdata/S20131121S0371.fits             2.0
...
../playdata/S20131122S0012.fits           120.0
../playdata/S20131122S0438.fits           120.0
../playdata/S20131122S0439.fits           120.0

(The list has been shorten for presentation.)

The | is the Unix “pipe” operator and it is used to pass output from dataselect to showd.

Let us go ahead and create our two list of darks. The following line creates a list of dark files that have exposure time of 120 seconds:

$ dataselect --tags DARK --expr "exposure_time==120" ../playdata/*.fits -o darks_120s.list

--expr is used to filter the files based on their descriptors. Here we are selecting files with exposure time of 120 seconds. You can repeat the same command with the other exposure time to get the list of short darks.

$ dataselect --tags DARK --expr "exposure_time==2" ../playdata/*.fits -o darks_002s.list

2.4.2. A list for the flats

Now let us create the list containing the flat files:

$ dataselect --tags FLAT ../playdata/*.fits -o flats.list

We know that our dataset has only one filter (Y-band). If our dataset contained data with more filters, we would have had to use the --expr option to select the appropriate filter as follow:

$ dataselect --tags FLAT --expr "filter_name=='Y'" ../playdata/*.fits -o flats_Y.list

Note

Flamingos-2 Y, J and H flat fields are created from lamps-on and lamps-off flats. The software will sort them out, so put all lamps-on, lamp-off flats, in the list and let the software use them appropriately.

2.4.3. A list for the science observations

Finally, we want to create a list of the science targets. We are looking for files that are not calibration frames. To exclude them from our selection we can use the --xtags, e.g., --xtags CAL.

$ dataselect --xtags CAL ../playdata/*.fits -o sci_images.list

Remember that you can use the --expr option to select targets with different names (object) or exposure times (exposure_time), or use it with any of the datasets descriptors.

2.5. Create a Master Dark

We start the data reduction by creating a master dark for the science data. Here is how you reduce the 120 s dark data into a master dark:

$ reduce @darks_120s.list

The @ character before the name of the input file is the “at-file” syntax. More details can be found in the "at-file" Facility documentation.

The master dark is added to the local calibration manager using the following command:

$ caldb add S20131120S0115_dark.fits

Now reduce will be able to find this processed dark when needed to process other observations.

Note

The master dark will be saved in the same folder where reduce was called and inside the ./calibrations/processed_dark folder. The latter location is to cache a copy of the file. This applies to all the processed calibration.

Some people might prefer adding the copy in the calibrations directory as it is safe from a rm *, for example.

$ caldb add ./calibrations/processed_dark/S20131120S0115_dark.fits

2.6. Create a Bad Pixel Mask

The Bad Pixel Mask (BPM) can be built using a set of flat images with the lamps on and off and a set of short exposure dark files. Here, our shortest dark files have 2 second exposure time. Again, we use the reduce command to produce the BPMs.

It is important to note that the recipe library association is done based on the nature of the first file in the input list. Since the recipe to make the BPM is located in the recipe library for flats, the first item in the list must be a flat.

For Flamingos-2, the filter wheel’s location is such that the choice of filter does not interfere with the results. Here we have Y-band flats, so we will use Y-band flats.

$ reduce @flats_Y.list @darks_002s.list -r makeProcessedBPM

The -r tells reduce which recipe from the recipe library for F2-FLAT to use. If not specified the system will use the default recipe which is the one that produces a master flat, this is not what we want here. The output image will be saved in the current working directory with a _bpm suffix.

The local calibration manager does not yet support BPMs so we cannot add it to the database. It is a future feature. Until then we have to pass it manually to reduce to use it, as we will show below.

2.7. Create a Master Flat Field

The F2 Y-band master flat is created from a series of lamp-on and lamp-off exposures. They should all have the same exposure time. Each flavor is stacked (averaged), then the lamp-off stack is subtracted from the lamp-on stack and the result normalized.

We create the master flat field and add it to the calibration manager as follow:

$ reduce @flats_Y.list -p addDQ:user_bpm="S20131129S0320_bpm.fits"
$ caldb add S20131129S0320_flat.fits

Here, the -p flag tells reduce to set the input parameter user_bpm of the addDQ primitive to the filename of the BPM we have just created. There will be a message “WARNING - No static BPMs defined”. This is normal. This is because F2 does not have a static BPM that is distributed with the package. Your user BPM is the only one that is available.

2.8. Reduce the Science Images

Now that we have the master dark and the master flat, we can tell reduce to process our science data. reduce will look at the local database for calibration files.

$ reduce @sci_images.list -p addDQ:user_bpm="S20131129S0320_bpm.fits"

This command retrieves the master dark and the master flat, and applies them to the science data. For sky subtraction, the software analyses the sequence to establish whether this is a dither-on-target or an offset-to-sky sequence and then proceeds accordingly. Finally, the sky-subtracted frames are aligned and stacked together. Sources in the frames are used for the alignment.

The final product file will have a _stack.fits suffix and it is shown below.

The output stack units are in electrons (header keyword BUNIT=electrons). The output stack is stored in a multi-extension FITS (MEF) file. The science signal is in the “SCI” extension, the variance is in the “VAR” extension, and the data quality plane (mask) is in the “DQ” extension.

Warning

The upper-left quadrant of this science sequence is rather messy. This is caused by the PWFS2 guide probe (see Emission from PWFS2 guide probe). Photometry in this portion of the image is likely to be seriously compromised.

_images/S20131121S0075_stack.fits.png