Overview: FOC Datasets ST-ECF Archive

Faint Object Camera: dataset description

During the pipeline calibration, datasets consisting of are created for the Faint Object Camera.

These data sets are used as input to the standard calibration program, CALFOC, which produces three types of calibrated science files:

For the normal-image mode, photometric correction is done first, followed by geometric correction; this means that the C1 image is fully corrected.

For spectrographic images, geometric correction is done first, so it is the C0 image that is fully corrected.

Flat fields (C2), are not images in the usual sense, although they are in the same format. The C2 file is a list of the locations of reseau marks found in the raw flat field. Positions are in photocathode coordinates. No other processing is done on flat fields.

The Standard Header Packet, Unique Data log, and Data Quality files are not used in the calibration.

All files for a particular observation have the same root file name;
the type of data in each file is identified by its extension.

The format of all retrieved files from the ST-ECF archive is FITS.

File TypeShort NameFile ExtensionShort Description
Standard Header Packet SH shf.fits Telemetry values and spacecraft operation data (such as target position and spacecraft orbit).
Unique Data Log UL ulf.fits Command values for the instrument (such as exposure parameters) as well as observation-specific information (such as temperature)
Science Data file D0 d0f.fits The Science Data file is a two-dimensional image stored as single-precision floating-point values. Values in the header specify the instrument configuration, such as the filters and the relay. Other header keywords give the names of calibration reference files and flags to indicate what processing is to be done by CALFOC.
Data Quality file PD pdq.fits The Data Quality file is an image having the same dimension and size as the Science Data file. Each pixel in the data quality file is a flag used to identify invalid data points. For each pixel, a value of zero in the data quality file indicates that there is no known problem with the corresponding pixel in the science file. If because of data-dropouts the datum has been filled, the data quality value is 16. If the datum failed the Reed-Solomon error check, the data quality value is 1.
Photometrically corrected image C0 c0.fits For spectrographic images, geometric correction is done first, so it is the C0 image that is fully corrected.
Geometrically corrected image C1 c1.fits For the normal-image mode, photometric correction is done first, followed by geometric correction; this means that the C1 image is fully corrected.
Locations of reseau marks C2 c2.fits The C2 file is a list of the locations of reseau marks found in the raw flat field. Positions are in photocathode coordinates.


If both geometric correction and flat-field correction (UNI or SDE) are done, then the extensions will be ".c0" and ".c1" as usual. Otherwise, the files will have the following extensions:

CB cb.fits Output from first set of processing steps (background, ITF, pixel splitting, and absolute DE) when no subsequent processing is done.
CG cg.fits Geometrically corrected image if no flat-field correction is done.
CU cu.fits Flat-fielded image if no geometric correction is done.



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Last update: Jul 31, 1996