Observing, calibrating and reducing near-infrared imaging mosaics

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive workflow and open-source tools for calibrating, reducing, and creating mosaics from near-infrared astronomical imaging data, specifically for MMIRS observations.

Contribution

It introduces a complete pipeline and open-source tools tailored for near-infrared mosaic data reduction and calibration, enhancing data quality and usability.

Findings

Effective calibration improves mosaic quality.

Workflow supports accurate astrometric and photometric calibration.

Generated HiPS maps facilitate data visualization.

Abstract

In near-infrared bands, co-adding and tiling of astronomical imaging datasets require a sufficiently high calibration quality (flat fielding, background subtraction). Here we present a complete workflow for obtaining imaging mosaics with the MMT and Magellan Infrared Spectrograph (MMIRS) operated at the 6.5-m MMT in Arizona and open-source add-on tools developed for the MMIRS pipeline for preparation and data reduction of mosaic observations. We describe pre-observing actions, such as design of dithering patterns and mosaic layouts and post-processing steps to perform absolute astrometric and photometric calibration, and also generate HiPS maps to display the final data product in Aladin / Aladin Lite.