It performs a null debiassing, bad-pixel masking, dark subtraction, flat-field creation and division, registration using telescope offsets, and resampling. See the “Notes” for further information.

This recipe works well for faint sources and for moderately crowded fields. It is also used for observations that track a moving object.

• A World Co-ordinate System (WCS) using the AIPS convention is created in the headers should no WCS already exist.

• For IRCAM, old headers are reordered and structured with headings before groups of related keywords. The comments have units added or appear in a standard format. Four deprecated headers are removed. FITS-violating headers are corrected. Spurious instrument names are changed to IRCAM3.

• The bad-pixel mask applied is $ORAC_DATA_CAL/bpm.

• Each dark-subtracted frame has thresholds applied beyond which pixels are flagged as bad. The lower limit is 5 standard deviations below the mode, but constrained to the range $-$100 to 1. The upper limit is 1000 above the saturation limit for the detector in the mode used.

• The flat field is created iteratively. First an approximate flat-field is created by combining normalised object frames using the median at each pixel. This flat field is applied to the object frames. Sources within the flat-fielded frames are detected, and masked in the dark-subtracted frames. The first stage is repeated but applied to the masked frames to create the final flat field.

• Registration is performed using the telescope offsets transformed to pixels.

• The resampling applies non-integer shifts of origin using bilinear interpolation. There is no rotation to align the Cartesian axes with the cardinal directions.

• The recipe makes the mosaics by applying offsets in intensity to give the most consistent result amongst the overlapping regions. The mosaic is not trimmed to the dimensions of a single frame, thus the noise will be greater in the peripheral areas having received less exposure time. The mosaic is not normalised by its exposure time (that being the exposure time of a single frame).

• For each cycle of jittered frames, the recipe creates a mosaic, which has its bad pixels filled and is then added into a master mosaic of improving signal to noise. The exposure time is also summed and stored in the mosaic’s corresponding header. Likewise the end airmass header and end UT headers are updated to match that of the last-observed frame contributing to the mosaic.

• Intermediate frames are deleted except for the flat-fielded (_ff suffix) frames.

• The integrated mosaic in $<$m$>$$<$date$>$_$<$group_number$>$_mos, where $<$m$>$ is the instrument’s group prefix.

• A mosaic for each cycle of jittered frames in
  $<$m$>$$<$date$>$_$<$group_number$>$_mos$<$cycle_number$>$, where $<$cycle_number$>$
  counts from 0.

• The individual flat-fielded frames in $<$i$>$$<$date$>$_$<$obs_number$>$_ff, where $<$i$>$ is the frame prefix. The naming format is slightly different for some non-UKIRT instruments.

• The created flat fields in flat_$<$filter$>$_$<$group_number$>$ for the first or only cycle, and flat_$<$filter$>$_$<$group_number$>$_c$<$cycle_number$>$ for subsequent cycles.

NUMBER = INTEGER

USEVAR = LOGICAL

• The processing engines are from the Starlink packages: Ccdpack, Kappa, Figaro, and EXTRACTOR.

• Uses the Starlink NDF format.

• History is recorded within the data files.

• The title of the data is propagated through intermediate files to the mosaic.

• Error propagation is controlled by the USEVAR parameter.