saltmosaic

Name

saltmosaic – mosaic multiple CCD amplifier images

Usage

saltmosaic images outimages outpref geomfile interp (cleanup) (clobber) logfile (verbose) (status)

Parameters

images

String. List of input images including, if necessary, absolute or relative paths to the data. Data can be provided as a comma-separated list, or a string with a wildcard (e.g. ‘images=S20061210*.fits’), or a foreign file containing an ascii list of image filenames. For ascii list option, the filename containing the list must be provided preceded by a ‘@’ character, e.g. 'images=@listoffiles.lis‘. Do not provide any files that have already been mosaiced.

outimages

String. A list of images. Data can be provided as a comma-separated list, or a string with a wildcard (e.g. ‘outimages=rS20061210*.fits’), or a foreign file containing an ascii list of image filenames. For the ascii list option, the filename containing the list must be provided preceded by a ‘@’ character, e.g. 'outimages=@listoffiles.lis‘. This list must be of the same size as the images argument list. If the output is intended for a different directory the absolute or relative path must be supplied with the file name. .e

outpref

String. If the outpref string is non-zero in length and contains characters other than a blank space, it will override any value of the outimages argument. Output file names will use the name list provided in the images argument, but adding a prefix to each output file defined by outpref. An absolute or relative directory path can be included in the prefix, e.g. ‘outpref=/Volumes/data/b’.

geomfile

String. This is the name of an ascii table that contains parameters describing the relational focal plane geometry between CCDs of a detector array. Working examples are stored in /iraf/extern/salt/salticam/data/SALTICAMgeom.dat and /iraf/extern/salt/pfis/data/PFISgeom.dat. The table is used both to rotate and translate CCD images with respect to each other before stitching them together within a single image. An example of the table format follows:

# PFIS CCD Geometry data
# Date    gap xshift(1) yshift(1) rot(1) xshift(3) yshift(3) rot(3)
2004-01-01  90  -14.53   1.84    0.0931    2.35      0.84   -0.0337

Lines beginning with the character ‘#’ are ignored as comments. The date refers to the day after which the geometry is valid, but this is currently an unused parameter. ‘gap’ refers to the idealized distance between neighburing CCDs. Note that there are two CCD gaps in the RSS mosaic which are not of identical size, but there is only one gap parameter in the goemtry file. ‘xshift’ refers to an additional translation performed on the CCD after the gap has been introduced. Regardless of the instrument, CCD number 2 is always considered the reference CCD. This is the right-most CCD in the SALTICAM 2x1 mosiac and the middle CCD in the RSS 3x1 mosaic. The reference CCD is neither translated or rotated. All other CCDs are translated and rotated relative to the reference CCD. xshift(1) refers to the translation in the x-direction of the first CCD and xshift(3) refers to the translation in the x-direction of the third CCD. xshift is used to create CCD gaps of differing size according to on-sky calibration of the CCD geometry. ‘yshift’ refers to a CCD translation in the y-direction. gap, xshift and yshift are all recorded in raw, unbinned pixel units. ‘rot’ refers to a CCD rotation relative to the reference CCD with units of degrees.

interp

String. The interpolation scheme used to rebin pixel values during translation and rotation. The choices are:

linear  -- linear function
nearest -- nearest pixel center
poly3   -- 3rd order polynomial function
poly5   -- 5th order polynomial function
spline3 -- cubic spline function
sinc    -- sinc function

‘nearest’ is the least expensive for CPU processing but the least accurate, the ‘sinc’ function is the most expensive.

(cleanup)

Hidden Boolean. If cleanup=’yes’, all intermediate files will be deleted at the end of the task. The default is cleanup=’yes’.

(clobber)

Hidden boolean. If clobber=’yes’, files contained within the working directory will be overwritten by newly created files of the same name. The default is clobber=’no’.

logfile

String. Name of an ascii file for storing log and error messages written by the task. The file may be new, or messages can also be appended to a pre-existing file.

(verbose)

Hidden Boolean. If verbose=’no’, log messages will be suppressed from both the terminal and the log file. Error messages are excluded from this rule.

(status)

Hidden Integer. Provided status=0 is passed to saltmosaic, a successful run of the task will yield status=0 at completion of the task. Any other value for the status flag at completion indicates failed execution.

Description

Raw SALT data is stored in FITS files using separate file extensions for each amplifier image. Each CCD has two readout amplifiers and each detector has mulitiple CCDs. Hence a single RSS exposure is stored in 2x3 FITS extensions and single SALTICAM image is stored in 2x2 FITS extensions. saltmosaic combines a set of amplifier images, obtained during the same exposure, into a single mosaiced image, stored in a single extension of the output FITS file.

The primary extension of the output file is a direct copy of the primary HDU in the input file. The majority of primary header keywords are also propagated into the image extensions of the output file. While this results in repetition of the keywords within the file, this procedure does improve the efficiency of extracting mosaiced data into 1- or 0-dimensional form.

Before performing mosaicing tasks, saltmosaic checks each input file to ascertain that it has not already been mosaiced. The flag is provided by the PMOSAIC or SMOSAIC keywords written to the primary extension of output by saltmosaic after a successful mosaic. If the number of HDU in the input FITS file are not consistent with the geometry defined in the CCD geometry file the task will quit.

saltmosaic assumes that the overscan and underscan regions have been trimmed from the input image using e.g. the saltbias task.

Slot mode data is often stored with multiple exposures contained in a single file. saltmosaic handles slot mode consistently, i.e. if an input SALTICAM FITS file contains four exposures (16 image HDUs in total) then the output file will also contains four exposures (4 image HDUs in total).

slotmosaic performs its task in three steps:

1. For each CCD in the array, stitch the two amplifers together. This step produces a temporary FITS file, stored in the working directory, with one extension for each CCD. If the data was obtained in slot mode, the number of extensions will be a multiple of the number of CCDs in the array.

2. Rotate and translate CCD images with respect to the reference CCD using the data stored in the geometry file ‘geomfile’. This step is performed by the IRAF tool iraf.images.immatch.geotran. geotran writes further temporary files, one for each rotated and translated CCD image. No temporary file is created for the reference CCD which remains unchanged after this step.

3. For each exposure, stitch the CCDs together to form a single image, written to a file with the specified output name. This step is where the CCD gaps are introduced to the data. The output file will contain a primary extension containing only keywords and an image extension containing the mosaiced data. Slot mode data will contain multiple image extensions in the output, one for each exposure in the input image.

The accuracy and form of pixel interpolation performed by geotran is governed by the interp argument. interp=’nearest’ provdes the greatest speed but the least accuracy.

If cleanup=’no’ then all temporary files will be deleted from the disk.

Examples

1. To mosaic a sequence of RSS image:

   --> saltmosaic images='/Volumes/data1/bxpP*.fits' outimages=''
   outpref='/Volumes/data2/m' geomfile='PFISgeom.dat'
   interp='linear' cleanup='yes' clobber='yes'
   logfile='salt.log' verbose='yes'

Time and disk requirements

Raw, unbinned RSS images have sizes exceeding 100 MB each. On a linux machine with 2.8 Ghz processor and 2 Gb of RAM, one 2051x2051 image can be processed in in 1.38 sec.

Bugs and limitations

No distortion correction is performed on the amplifier images before they are mosaiced. Image distortion has yet to be calibrated or monitored on the SALT instruments.

Send feedback and bug reports to salthelp@saao.ac.za

See also

saltclean iraf.images.immatch.geotran