Add a New Instrument

Take the following steps to add support for a new observatory and/or instrument:

  • Make a .yaml file for the instrument. In the nirc2_reduce/data/header_kw_dicts/ directory, copy the nirc2.yaml file and give it a short, descriptive, all-lowercase name corresponding to the new instrument.

  • Update the new .yaml file with the header keywords the code will scrub. Most of the keywords should be self-explanatory.

  • If you’d like to apply distortion corrections, put new x, y distortion maps into the nirc2_reduce/data/ directory; these can be called with optional keywords to observation.Observation.dewarp(warpx='', warpy='')

  • If needed, define new dither patterns in nirc2_reduce.observation. They can most likely at least partially inherit from the base Observation class.

  • If desired, define new custom colormaps for your targets of interest in nirc2_reduce.prettycolors

  • Test the package out on some of your data, and submit any issues you find with the codebase in the process.

  • Make a pull request for your additions so that the community can benefit! See Contributing.