Bias

Overview

This file describes the data model for the Bias image. This is written to disk as a multi-extension FITS file prefixed by Bias in the Calibrations/ folder.

This is generally a simple combination of all input bias frames.

Inspecting

The first extension is the stacked image. You can view it with any standard image viewer, e.g.:

ginga Calibrations/Bias_A_1_01.fits

It should resemble any one of your input bias frames aside from:

  • Having been overscan subtracted

  • Being only a trimmed portion of the image

  • Re-oriented so that vertical is the spectral dimension with blue at the bottom

Here is an example for the LRIS RED spectrograph.

../_images/bias_image.png

Pretty boring, as expected. Note that this is only 1 of the 2 detectors for this spectrograph.

Trouble Shooting

If your image appears to be in err, here are the things to consider:

  • Is one or more of your input bias frames junk?

  • Is one or more of your input bias frames mis-labeled?

Current BiasImage Data Model

Internally, the image is held in BiasImage, which subclasses from PypeItImage and DataContainer. The datamodel written to disk is:

Version 1.3.0

HDU Name

HDU Type

Data Type

Description

PRIMARY

astropy.io.fits.PrimaryHDU

Empty data HDU. Contains basic header information.

BIAS_IMAGE

astropy.io.fits.ImageHDU

floating

Primary image data

BIAS_IVAR

astropy.io.fits.ImageHDU

floating

Inverse variance image

BIAS_DETECTOR

astropy.io.fits.BinTableHDU

The detector (see DetectorContainer) or mosaic (see Mosaic) parameters