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aXe Spectral Extraction and Visualization software

What is New?

  • 20-Nov-2009: New WFC3 calibration files released, see WFC3 grism page
  • 19-Nov-2009: aXe version 2.0 released, see the introduction to aXe-2.0
  • 23-Mar-2009: Configuration files for all ACS slitless modes adjusted for aXe-1.7
  • 05-Dec-2008: aXe paper accepted for publication in PASP (Kümmel, Walsh, Pirzkal, Kuntschner & Pasquali 2009, PASP 121, 59)
  • 01-Dec-2005: Release of aXe2web-1.1, see the release notes

aXe

What is aXe?

aXe is a spectroscopic data extraction software which was designed to handle large format spectroscopic slitless images such as from the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) or the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on HST. aXe is a PyRAF/IRAF package which consists of several tasks. The aXe tasks perform specific parts of the extraction and are successively used to produce extracted spectra.

A thorough description of aXe is given in a PASP paper. The links below and the aXe manual give instructions on how to install aXe and how to use it for reducing slitless data.

aXe2html

What is aXe2html?

Within the aXe2html-project we are developing tools which produce browsable web pages from reduced spectral data for fast and discerning examination of many hundreds of spectra. Those tools can be used as quick look facilities or preview facilites in data pipelines, data bases or even for virtual obeservatories.The first tool distributed in release aXe2html-1.0 is the task aXe2web which we developed for the aXe spectral extraction software.
A deep ACS WFC grism image can contain detectable spectra of hundreds to over a thousand objects. The individual checking of each spectra is very tedious. Therefore a quick look facility is higly desirable. The aim is to produce an overview of the extracted sources to be able to:

  • determine problems and/or flaws of the data reduction.
  • compare the results of various reductions schemes.
  • finally pick out interesting objects (e.g. high redshift
    • galaxies, SN, etc).

Further information on aXe is available on the following pages:

 

Maintained by Martin Kümmel <mkuemmel@eso.org>