The Legacy of the Hubble Space Telescope Spectrographs

The legacy recalibration and reprocessing of the entire archive of NICMOS data, consisting of more than 100,000 observations obtained since its installation on HST in 1997, has led to the production of a final archive that includes all the calibration and processing improvements that have been obtained as a result of our improved knowledge of the instrument performance during this time. This archive is unique in being the only set of HST observations in the 1 2 micron regime for over a decade until the installation of WFC3 in 2009, and provides the foundation for a wide range of follow-up science. The infrared detectors are susceptible to a wide range of calibration issues that are specific to infrared detectors, including persistence, temperature and bias-dependent effects, and an extensive program of calibration and software development has been carried out to correct these. These have been applied in a full recalibration and reprocessing of the entire archive of NICMOS data, including also MultiDrizzle combination and release in the HLA, resulting in a dataset with dramatically improved scientific value that will serve as a unique and extensive archival legacy in its own right, in addition to benefiting future infrared instruments and science programs.