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Paper: DrizzlePac: Managing Multi-component WCS Solutions for HST Data
Volume: 475, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XXII
Page: 49
Authors: Hack, W. J.; Dencheva, N.; Fruchter, A. S.
Abstract: Calibration of the geometric distortion of HST instruments includes up to 3 separate distortion components to be used in conjunction with the WCS information. Managing and applying these separate components in an efficient manner required merging the use of multiple FITS conventions into a single WCS representation, which includes the full distortion model, that gets stored in the FITS header itself. The capabilities of this multi-component WCS already simplify how HST images are aligned and combined by users based on calibrations which have improved accuracy, while headerlets have the potential to allow alignment solutions to be more easily shared within the astronomical community. The logic implemented to combine these FITS conventions are described here. The DrizzlePac Python package now serves as a practical demonstration of how this new logic works with real HST data and shows how this set of tools provides all the pieces necessary for managing and applying these highly accurate, complex WCS representations with minimal effort.
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