Pixel-based correction for Charge Transfer Inefficiency in the Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys

By Richard J. Massey, C. Stoughton, A. Leauthaud, Jason D. Rhodes, A. Koekemoer, Richard S. Ellis, Edgar Shaghoulian. 2009

144 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Charge Transfer Inefficiency (CTI) due to radiation damage above the Earth's atmosphere creates spurious trailing in Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images. Radiation damage also creates unrelated warm pixels – but these happen to be perfect for measuring CTI. We model CTI in the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS)/Wide Field Channel and construct a physically motivated correction scheme. This operates on raw data, rather than secondary science products, by returning individual electrons to pixels from which they were unintentionally dragged during readout. We apply our correction to images from the HST Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), successfully reducing the CTI trails by a factor of ~30 everywhere in the CCD and at all flux levels. We quantify changes in galaxy photometry, astrometry and shape. The remarkable 97 per cent level of correction is more than sufficient to enable a (forthcoming) reanalysis of downstream science products and the collection of larger surveys.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/702ff55cb33b2a23ef95d3d2dcf2739cd7d2d150

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. V. van Dokkum
2. T. Treu
3. M. Franx
4. Richard S. Ellis
5. C. Conroy
6. P. Hopkins
7. L. Hernquist
8. J. Dunlop

In Biomedical Engineering

1. P. V. van Dokkum
2. H. Ferguson
3. D. Weinberg
4. M. Franx

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. J. Dunlop
2. R. Bouwens
3. R. McLure
4. M. Franx
5. P. V. van Dokkum
6. A. Koekemoer
7. Risa Wechsler
8. P. Behroozi

Citations in the corpus

• TWO ACCURATE TIME-DELAY DISTANCES FROM STRONG LENSING: IMPLICATIONS FOR COSMOLOGY (2012, methodology): “We reduce the images using MultiDrizzle12 with charge transfer inefficiency taken into account (e.g., Anderson & Bedin 2010; Massey et al. 2010).”
• Observational probes of cosmic acceleration (2012, methodology): “Remedies applied to HST data have included empirical corrections to the galaxy ellipticities as a function of row and magnitude, or pixellevel corrections that begin by “undoing” the charge transfer inefficiency before subsequent processing (Massey et al., 2010; Rhodes et al., 2010).”
• The behaviour of dark matter associated with four bright cluster galaxies in the 10 kpc core of Abell 3827 (2015, methodology): “We corrected this trailing using the software of Massey et al. (2010b, 2014) for the ACS/WFC and Anderson & Bedin (2010); Anderson (2014) for WFC3/UVIS.”
• STELLAR KINEMATICS OF z ∼ 2 GALAXIES AND THE INSIDE-OUT GROWTH OF QUIESCENT GALAXIES, (2012, background): “0, Koekemoer et al. 2007; Massey et al. 2010), which has a 0′′.03 pixel scale and PSF-FWHM of∼ 0′′.11.”
• Origins of weak lensing systematics, and requirements on future instrumentation (or knowledge of instrumentation) (2012, background): “However, many of the most serious nonlinear effects operate in the sense that the degradation of bright sources is much less than that of faint sources (Massey et al. 2010; Hoekstra et al. 2011).”
• Creation of cosmic structure in the complex galaxy cluster merger Abell 2744 (2011, methodology): “To undo this 1 Equally split between the two pointings trailing and correct the raw images pixel-by-pixel, we used the detector readout model of Massey et al. (2010), updated for device performance post Servicing Mission 4 by Massey (2010).”
• GalSim: The modular galaxy image simulation toolkit (2014, background): “…due to detector crosstalk (e.g. Moore et al., 2004; Antilogus et al., 2014) or the use of pixel-based corrections for charge transfer inefficiency (CTI, Massey et al. 2010), and it can be strikingly seen in images that have been created through the coaddition of two or more dithered input images.”
• UVUDF: ULTRAVIOLET THROUGH NEAR-INFRARED CATALOG AND PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS OF GALAXIES IN THE HUBBLE ULTRA DEEP FIELD (2015, methodology): “This affects the photometry and measured morphology of the objects in the images (Rhodes et al. 2010; Massey et al. 2010).”
• The bright end of the galaxy luminosity function at z≃7: before the onset of mass quenching? (2013, methodology): “Finally the field is also covered to single-orbit depth in the I814-band by the HST Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS; Koekemoer et al. 2007; Scoville et al. 2007a; Massey et al. 2010).”
• Evidence of the accelerated expansion of the Universe from weak lensing tomography with COSMOS (2009, methodology): “Internal calibrations (Mutchler & Sirianni 2005), photometric studies (e.g. Chiaberge et al. 2009), as well as the analysis of warm pixels (Massey et al. 2010) and cosmic rays (Jee et al. 2009) demonstrate that the influence of CTI increases linearly with time and the number ofy-transfers, where…”
• H0LiCOW - IV. Lens mass model of HE 0435-1223 and blind measurement of its time-delay distance for cosmology (2016, methodology): “The images are reduced using MultiDrizzle4 with charge transfer inefficiency taken into account (e.g., Anderson & Bedin 2010; Massey et al. 2010).”
• NEW CONSTRAINTS ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE STELLAR-TO-DARK MATTER CONNECTION: A COMBINED ANALYSIS OF GALAXY–GALAXY LENSING, CLUSTERING, AND STELLAR MASS FUNCTIONS FROM z = 0.2 to z = 1 (2011, methodology): “This correction scheme has been shown by Massey et al. (2010) to reduce the CTI trails by a factor of ∼10 everywhere in the CCD and at all flux levels.”