IRAC Data Reduction Recipes

Welcome to the IRAC Data Reduction Recipes page.

This website contains step-by-step recipes for reducing data taken by the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on board the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Each recipe focuses on the reduction issues associated with an example data set, including extragalactic and galactic fields. If you intend to use MOPEX to process your data (regardless of your particular data set), we suggest that you read the "COSMOS IRAC channel 1 Mosaic" recipe, which includes an overview of the MOPEX GUI.

In addition, we recommend that you consult the following resources:

The IRAC Data Handbook
The IRAC Data Features/Caveats Page
The Spitzer FAQ
The "Basic Data Reduction Steps" section near the bottom of the IRAC Data Analysis Page
The MOPEX Online Manual

IRAC Recipes:

Retrieving your data	This link provides both general information and specific examples on how to retrieve data, whether public or proprietary, from the Spitzer archives.
COSMOS IRAC channel 1 Mosaic	This recipe demonstrates how to use the MOPEX GUI to produce a science-grade IRAC mosaic images from COSMOS Legacy observations. These techniques are generally applicable to medium deep blank-field survey observations (~15 minute integrations with more than 10 exposures). This recipe also provides a general introduction to the MOPEX GUI, and we recommend reading it even if your data are more shallow or deeper than COSMOS.
GFLS IRAC channel 3 Mosaic	This example demonstrates how to use the MOPEX GUI to make a mosaic of a portion of the Galactic First Look Survey. It focusses on IRAC channel 3, and discusses how to correct for residual offsets, match backgrounds in overlapping frames, and remove outliers.
SINGS NGC 1097 IRAC Mosaic	This example demonstrates how to run MOPEX to create mosaics of a large field of view around the SINGS galaxy NGC 1097 in IRAC channels 1 through 4. We pay special attention to choosing the appropriate parameters in the MOPEX namelist files, and discuss the effects of various choices of several of these parameters. For channels 3 and 4, we show how to run the overlap correction script before mosaicking. The final products include the mosaic image, the mosaic uncertainty image, and the mosaic coverage map.
BANDMERGE	This recipe demonstrates how to run Bandmerge, the SSC-supported software to combine 2-7 ASCII tables of source positions and fluxes from different wavebands into a single merged data table.
Synthetic Photometry	This link provides information (and IDL software) on how to determine the expected flux recorded by any of Spitzer's imagers, given an input spectrum.

IRAC Data Reduction Recipes

IRAC Recipes:

Return to the Data Analysis Cookbook.