NICMOS Data Quality Control and Paper Products

The HST pipeline routinely creates hardcopy products, or paper products, for all data. These products are used both to provide hardcopy output for the GOs and also by the Contact Scientists for data quality evaluation. The products must therefore be general enough to support both sets of users. This poster provides an introduction to the NICMOS paper products. A set of paper products summarizes a set of exposures, typically a single visit in a proposal. The pages are separated into visit-level and exposure-level pages. The visit-level pages include the cover page, explanatory notes, and tables summarizing the details of the observations. These are followed by the exposure-level pages which include a picture of each calibrated (cal) exposure followed by a data quality summary and a calibration reference file summary for that exposure. For associated data, there is first a picture of the mosaicked (mos) image. For associations with a pattern, this is followed by a cartoon of the observing pattern and on-target and background individual images. All associated exposures also have stamp-sized pictures of each of the calibrated images in that association. Sample images with possible data quality concerns are shown at the end. Figure 1. The Cover Page contains the proposal ID, visit numbers, PI’s name, and proposal title. The second page consists of Explanatory Notes which explain the contents of the paper products. If you have questions about your data please send e-mail to your Contact Scientist.