HSTCosmicrays: A Python Package for Analyzing Cosmic Rays in HST Calibration Data

TL;DR

HSTCosmicrays is a Python package that efficiently detects and analyzes cosmic rays in Hubble Space Telescope dark calibration frames, processing over a billion cosmic rays across thousands of images using local or cloud computing.

Contribution

The paper introduces HSTCosmicrays, a new Python pipeline that automates cosmic ray detection and characterization in HST dark frames, scalable to large datasets and multiple instruments.

Findings

Characterized over 1.2 billion cosmic rays.

Processed ~76,000 dark frames from multiple HST instruments.

Operates efficiently on local and cloud platforms.

Abstract

HSTCosmicrays is a python-based pipeline designed to find and characterize cosmic rays found in dark frames (exposures taken with the shutter closed). Dark exposures are obtained routinely by all the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) instruments for calibration. The main processing pipeline runs locally or in the cloud on AWS. To date, we have characterized more than 1.2 billion cosmic rays in ~76,000 dark frames obtained with CCDs from the four active instruments ACS/HRC, ACS/WFC, STIS, WFC3/UVIS, and the legacy instrument WFPC2.