SImMER: A Pipeline for Reducing and Analyzing Images of Stars
Abstract
We present the first public version of SImMER, an open-source Python reduction pipeline for astronomical images of point sources. Current capabilities include dark-subtraction, flat-fielding, sky-subtraction, image registration, FWHM measurement, contrast curve calculation, and table and plot generation. SImMER supports observations taken with the ShARCS camera on the Shane 3 m telescope and the PHARO camera on the Hale 5.1 m telescope. The modular nature of SImMER allows users to extend the pipeline to accommodate additional instruments with relative ease. One of the core functions of the pipeline is its image registration module, which is flexible enough to reduce saturated images and images of similar-brightness, resolved stellar binaries. Furthermore, SImMER can compute contrast curves for reduced images and produce publication-ready plots. The code is developed online at https://github.com/arjunsavel/SImMER and is both pip- and conda-installable. We develop tutorials and documentation alongside the code and host them online. With SImMER, we aim to provide a community resource for accurate and reliable data reduction and analysis.
Additional Information
We acknowledge funding support from the Hellman Family Faculty Fund, the Sloan Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (grant 2019-69648). A.B. Savel acknowledges funding from the Heising-Simons Foundation. We thank the members of Prof. Courtney Dressing's research group for providing helpful feedback on the SImMER user experience. In particular, we thank Steven Giacalone for assisting as we benchmarked different contrast curve implementations. We gratefully acknowledge the staff at Lick and Palomar observatories for their work in operating and maintaining their respective instruments. Furthermore, we thank the anonymous reviewer for their careful reading of this manuscript that greatly improved its quality. This research made use of Photutils, an Astropy package for detection and photometry of astronomical sources (Bradley et al. 2022). This research has made use of NASA's Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 118743
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20230105-911538600.6
- Hellman Fellowship
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- 2019-69648
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation
- Heising-Simons Foundation
- Created
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2023-02-07Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-02-07Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)