Keck Cosmic Web Imager Data Reduction Pipeline

KCWI_DRP is a the official data reduction pipeline (DRP) for the Keck Cosmic Web Imager. This DRP has been developed by the KCWI team at Caltech in collaboration with the W. M. Keck Observatory Scientific Software Group.

Release 1.2

We are excited to announce the release version of 1.2.0 of the KCWI DRP!

Like version 1.1, this version now with support for both the red and blue sides of the instrument. This pipeline is based off of the original KCWIdrp IDL pipeline developed by the KCWI team at Caltech, and this pipeline continues to be the only pipeline supported by the W. M. Keck Observatory.

New Features

  • Simplified installation via pip and conda environment

  • Vacuum to air and heliocentric or barycentric correction

  • Ability of using KOA file names or original file names

  • Full traceability of DRP versions and execution steps in HISTORY headers

  • Versatile sky subtraction modes including using external sky frames, ability to manually mask regions, or skipping it entirely

  • Formal support system via GitHub issues

  • Added support for Mac intel M2 and M3 chips in Python 3.12

For older versions, see Previous versions.

Users

Follow the documentation in this section to reduce KCWI data.

More information

For more information on the internals of the pipeline, see the following sections: .. toctree:

:maxdepth: 1

pipeline_concepts
api

Other Helpful Packages

The following packages might be helpful to users working with reduced KCWI data. Please note that these packages are not maintained or developed by W. M. Keck Observatory or the KCWI team at Caltech. Rather, these are community-developed packages that are listed only for convenience. If you utilize any of these packages, please ensure that you properly cite their developers in addition to the KCWI DRP’s.

KCWIKit

KCWIKit is a community developed package to extend the official KCWI DRP with a variety of stacking tools and DRP improvements. The software offers masking and median filtering scripts to be used while running the KCWI DRP, and a step-by-step KCWI_DRP implementation for finer control over the reduction process. Once the DRP has finished, KCWIKit can be used to stack the output cubes via the Montage package. Various functions cross-correlate and mosaic the constituent cubes and the final stacked cubes are WCS corrected. Helper functions can then be used to deproject the stacked cube into lower-dimensional representations should the user desire.

Developers

The KCWI DRP was developed in collaboration between:

  • Don Neill, Matt Matuszewki, Nik Prusinski, Chris Martin and the KCWI Team at Caltech

  • Max Brodheim, Luca Rizzi, and Rosalie McGurk at W. M. Keck Observatory

Vacuum-to-air and helio/barycentric correction algorithms provided by Yuguang Chen at Caltech.

Maintenance and support of the DRP are provided as part of the Data Services Initiative (PI: John O’Meara), in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Indices and tables