I'm ready to advance to a highly technical and in-depth discussion on processing Spitzer data.
STILL UNDER DEVELOPMENT... working on it
- Formal, complete data filenaming conventions for these Spitzer data (not at all sugar-coated)
- Data Handbooks for these Spitzer data (tells you which files are important, but also not at all sugar-coated)
The basic idea here is the same as the basic idea for making a simple mosaic. The difference here is the following: whereas before you were combining products from our pipeline (which takes into account a variety of things, nearly all of which are instrumental artifacts), now you are starting from individual frames, so it becomes much more of your responsibility to take into account instrumental artifacts. You need to tell MOPEX not just the individual frames and errors, but also the individual mask files, including masks for permanently damaged pixels (which change with time as the telescope ages) and masks for instrumental artifacts (like cosmic rays and scattered light). This process has MANY MORE buttons and dials than the prior, simpler process - which is good once you're an expert, because you can remove the artifacts and leave a great image. But all these options also means you can really easily shoot yourself in the foot if you are not careful.
