MOPEX Online Manual

Introduction

MOPEX (Mosaicking and Point-source Extraction) is a package developed at the Spitzer Science Center for astronomical image processing. Put in the simplest possible terms, MOPEX starts with basic calibrated data downloaded from the Spitzer archive, levels the backgrounds of the input images, co-adds them together to produce a mosaic with optional rejection of outliers (e.g. cosmic rays), and performs point source extraction on the detected sources.

MOPEX can be run in two ways - either from the command line, or using the Graphical User Interface (GUI). The GUI is more user-friendly, especially for first-time users, but the command-line contains some additional functionality that has not yet been implemented in the GUI.

These online help pages describe the software in full, but focus on running MOPEX on the command-line. Full instructions on how to run MOPEX from the GUI are included in the GUI Help system. For instructions on how to start the GUI, please see the Downloading MOPEX page.

User Interface

MOPEX is available in two versions, the new Graphical User Interface (GUI) and the command-line version. They are packaged and released together, and all updates to both versions are done through the GUI. Both versions use the same set of C programs to carry out the data reduction. We advise all new users to start with the GUI in order to familiarise themselves with the software. Users may want to progress to the command-line version for large batch jobs in order to script their data reduction, take advantage of the slightly faster processing time, or to use some of the additional functionality not yet available through the GUI.

Getting Help

If you have any questions about MOPEX then you can get help by emailing us at the Spitzer Helpdesk. Please let us know what operating platform you are running (MacOSX/Linux/Solaris), as much information about the problem as possible, plus any error messages you saw. If you are using the GUI then please also include the most recent log file, which can be found in the directory ~/.spot. We endeavor to reply to all queries within 48 hours.