NICMOSlook

Screenshot of NICMOSlook

NICMOSlook is a computer program to analyze spectral data obtained with the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The program was designed at the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF) and is programmed in IDL. The program is available from their website.

One of the capabilities of NICMOS is its grism mode for slitless spectrometry at low resolution. Typically, a direct image is taken in conjunction with grism images for wavelength calibration. NICMOSlook is a highly specialized interactive tool to extract one dimensional spectra (flux versus wavelength) from such data.

NICMOSlook has a non-interactive counterpart “Calnic C”, a program that performs a subset of NICMOSlook's functions in a "pipelined" approach. NICMOSlook is most commonly used for small amounts of data when users prefer to have full control of all the parameters for individual spectrum extraction, or for cases where Calnic C did not extract the spectra satisfactorily. Unlike Calnic C, NICMOSlook requires the user to determine the best way to find an object and provides a number of different ways to accomplish this. Similarly, the user decides whether to use a weighting appropriate for point sources or weighting by the size of the object for the extraction of the spectra.

External links

• ST-ECF page for NICMOSlook