January 2024:   For more information on Hubble Advanced Products (HAP), please see the following resources.

________________

NEWS:  September 9, 2022

In August 2022, a new ACS/WFC3 instrument science report (ACS ISR 2022-03; WFC3 ISR 2022-06) titled 'Improved Absolute Astrometry for ACS and WFC3 Data Products'  was published. This ISR describes updated WCS solutions in MAST data as well two new types of Hubble Advanced Products (HAP). 

Abstract:
As of late-2019, MAST data products for ACS and WFC3 include improved absolute astrometry in the image header World Coordinate System (WCS). The updated WCS solutions are computed during pipeline processing by aligning sources in the HST images to a select set of reference catalogs (e.g. Gaia eDR3). We compute statistics on the alignment fraction for each detector and estimate the uncertainties in the WCS solutions when aligning to different reference catalogs. We describe two new types of Hubble Advanced Products (HAP), referred to as Single Visit Mosaics (SVMs) and Multi Visit Mosaics (MVM), which began production in MAST in late-2020 and mid-2022, respectively. The SVM products include an additional relative alignment across filters in a visit, and the drizzled images are used to generate point source and segment catalogs during pipeline processing. These catalogs supersede those produced by the Hubble Legacy Archive and will be the basis of the next version of the Hubble Source Catalog. The MVM data products combine all ACS/WFC, WFC3/UVIS, or WFC3/IR images falling within a pre-defined 0.2° x 0.2° 'sky cell' for each detector+filter, which are drizzled to a common all-sky pixel grid. When combining observations over a large date range, MVMs may have photometric errors of several percent or systematic alignment errors when combining visits with different catalog solutions. We therefore recommend these to be used as ‘discovery images’ for comparing observations in different detectors and passbands and not for precise photometry.

____________________

PRIOR NEWS:

On December 3, 2019, the first set of improved astrometry data were released in MAST. The World Coordinate System (WCS) in the image header of all WFC3 and ACS datasets were updated and may include  one or more corrections. The first makes use of a new version of the Hubble Guide Star Catalog (GSC version 2.4.0) which updates the coordinates of the guide stars with the positions from Gaia DR1. This reduces the typical uncertainties in the positions of the guide stars to ~200 mas over the entire sky. Combining this with knowledge of the instrument distortions, an a priori correction was made. When possible, an additional correction was applied by aligning sources in each HST image directly to the Gaia catalog, referred to as an a posteriori correction. While some observing modes cannot be aligned to Gaia (e.g. grism and moving target observations) or the alignment may fail due to a lack of sources in either the HST image or the Gaia catalog, approximately 80% of ACS/WFC and 50% of WFC3/IR frames have been directly aligned. For these data products, the typical pointing uncertainty is reduced to ~10 mas, although the uncertainties increase for observations further in time from the Gaia reference epoch (2015.0 for DR1, 2015.5 for DR2). The software used to produce these drizzled products is described on the Pipeline Astrometric Calibration page.

On December 17, 2020, the MAST began production of new ACS and WFC3 products in the HST data calibration pipeline (see the following MAST Newsletter article. These Hubble Legacy Archive (HLA)-style mosaics comprise the data from a single HST visit which are aligned to a common astrometric reference frame. These new 'Hubble Advanced Products' (HAP) are referred to as 'Single Visit Mosaics' (SVMs) and are described in a MAST Newsletter article from December 2020. The data products are all drizzled onto the same north-up pixel grid and may include improved relative alignment across filters for datasets acquired within the same visit, enabling easy comparison of the images through multiple filters. When possible, sources in the images have been aligned directly to the Gaia catalog to improve the WCS. SVM data products with both relative alignment (by filter) and absolute alignment to Gaia will contain the string 'FIT_SVM_GAIA' in the 'WCSNAME' keyword in the science extension of the image header. The software used to compute these new data products is described in the DrizzlePac documentation for Single Visit Mosaic Processing.

On November 23, 2021, MAST began producing source catalogs as part of the SVM data products. BecauseSVMproductsincludeanadditionalrelativealignmentacrossfiltersina visit,the drizzled imagesmayusedto generatepoint sourceand segmentcatalogsduring pipeline processing. Thesecatalogssupersedethoseproducedby theHubbleLegacy Archiveand will be the basis ofthenext version of the Hubble Source Catalog.

On April 26, 2022, the HST data calibration and archive pipelines began producing a new Hubble Advanced Product (HAP) to be distributed through MAST. These are cross-visit, cross-proposal mosaics called Multi-Visit Mosaics (MVM), which combine public observations of fields observed multiple times by ACS and WFC3 into a set of products drizzled onto a common, pre-defined pixel grid. These new products were described in a MAST Newsletter article from May 2022 and complement the existing HAP Single Visit Mosaics (SVM) released in December 2020.

Usage 

Images downloaded from the archive after reprocessing with the new Enhanced Pipeline Products code will have headerlets added as extra extensions to the FITS file. A new python notebook, 'Using updated astrometry solutions', will familiarize users with the structure of the new FITS images and demonstrate how the primary WCS may be changed to any other preferred solution. These instructions will also show how to back out the new WCS updates entirely if desired (see the section below on 'Caveats').

Alternatively, any of the new WCS solutions may be downloaded from MAST/STScI as separate headerlet files and applied to existing data. For users who wish to manually reprocess existing data, the 'updatewcs' task in the STWCS package as used by the Enhanced Pipeline Products code will be able to automatically connect to the astrometry database to retrieve and apply the headerlets. Python functions for creating, updating, and applying headerlets to FITS images are described via the Headerlet User Interface.

Text modified from HST Astrometry Project Overview

Guide Star Catalogs

Historically, the accuracy of HST absolute astrometry has been limited primarily by uncertainties in the celestial coordinates of the guide stars . GSC1 as specified in the Guide Star Catalog. GSC 1.1 had nominal rms errors per coordinate of ~0.5 arcsec per coordinate, with errors as large as ~1‐3 arcsec reported near the plate edges. This accuracy improved substantially in October 2005 (during Cycle 15) with the introduction of GSC 2.3.2, which had where rms errors per coordinate of were reduced to ~0.3 arcsec over the whole sky.  An updated version of the catalog (GSC 2.4.0) has now been released as of November 2019was released in October 2017, improving the celestial coordinates with the positions from GAIA Gaia DR1 and reducing errors to < 30mas over the entire sky. Thus, after After including uncertainties in the positions of the science Instruments instruments (SIs) in the alignment of the focal plane to the Fine Guidance Sensors (FGS), the total error in HST absolute astrometry is ~1 arcsec for observations made with GSC 1.1, ~0.3 arcsec for those made with GSC 2.3.2, and ~0.1 arcsec when using the new 2 arcsec for those with GSC 2.4.  .0. These errors are reduced to ~10 mas for observations with a posteriori alignment to Gaia. A summary of the GSC properties and associated errors is given pointing errors over the HST lifetime and the expected accuracy of the updated WCS solutions is provided in Table 1. 

Table 1: Key Guide GSCStar Catalog Properties releases and associated errors 

...

HST Astrometry Project

The celestial coordinates populated in the FITS headers of HST observations retrieved from DADS (the HST Data Archiving and Distribution Service) were derived based on the guide star coordinates in use at the time of the observation, and thus improve in accuracy with date. As the accuracy in these catalogs were refined over time, the pointing accuracy of HST has also improved. Table 1 lists the catalog in use at the time of installation of the three main imaging cameras : (WFPC2, ACS, and WFC3) and the typical errors at each epoch.

The goal of the HST Astrometry Project is to correct these inconsistencies in the archive archival data products as much as possible.  As observations are processed or reprocessed in the HST pipeline, they will have their World Coordinate System (WCS) will be updated to use the most accurate solution available. There are 2 two types of correction corrections that can be performed.:

• a prioripriori         : correct the Guide Star positions coordinates of the guide stars in use at the time of observation to the GAIA reference frame and apply that coordinates of those stars as determined by Gaia, applying a global offset to the image WCS.
• a posteriori posteriori  : identify sources in the HST image with objects in the GAIA catalog or another reference catalog on the same frame and derive a new WCS based on and cross-match with positions from an external reference catalog (such as Gaia) to improve the WCS (fitting x/y to RA/Dec.)

ANote that a priori corrections will still include any errors in the HST focal plane alignment and are only relevant for observations which executed prior October 2017 (eg. prior to the release of GSC 2.4. A posteriori corrections 0), and these will still include small errors in the alignment of the science instruments to the HST focal plane. The a posteriori corrections are limited to imaging instruments for which there are enough an adequate number sources to define a good reference catalog for matching. These solutions remove the uncertainties in the focal plane and are expected to have the smallest absolute astrometric error.

Implementation

The key to being able to carry out this project implementing improvements to the astrometry is the use of headerlets, self-contained FITS extensions containing a WCS transformation which can to be attached to a FITS file and applied to the primary WCS. An observation can have multiple headerlets, each of which may have astrometry derived by differing methods. As HST data is processed/reprocessed, all available headerlets will be present as FITS extensions in the archived image with the best solution applied to the primary wcs. A user can easily apply any of the solutions to the primary wcs using astropy if they wish to use a different one.

LINK TO JUPYTER NOTEBOOK

A database was created to contain all the headerlets that is used by the xxxtask 'create_headerlet'? task to save and retrieve headerlets during pipeline processing. This database is accessed using a restful web service as well as a simple web-form. Prior to enabling this database in the HST pipeline, it was pre-populated with headerlets derived from:

WCS.  More details on how the WCS information is stored in headerlets may be found on the page Astrometry in Drizzled Products.

WCS Naming Conventions

Successfully aligning an observation to Gaia using the a posteriori processing will result in an update of the 'active' WCS of the image with the new solution and the new headerlet extension. This headerlet not only includes the WCS keywords which define the transformation from pixels to Gaia-aligned positions on the sky, but it also contains information about how this solution was derived along with the errors to be expected based on the fit. 

The various WCS solutions are identified by the WCSNAME keyword found in each FITS headerlet and use the following naming convention: 

wcsName = OriginalSolution - CorrectionType

 where OriginalSolution may be either

•    OPUS : initial ground system wcs, no distortion correction
•    IDC_xxxxxxxxx : initial distortion corrected wcs  (where xxxxxxxxx = geometric distortion model used, eg. the rootname of the IDCTAB reference file)

 and CorrectionType may have several forms

•    GSC240 : 'a priori' WCS where guide star coordinates are corrected from the original reference frame (e.g. GSC1.1 or GSC2.3) to the Gaia DR1-based GSC2.4.0
•    HSC30 :   'a priori' WCS corrected from the original reference frame
• The original pipeline astrometry based on original guide star positions
• a priori corrected astrometry based on updating the guide star positions to the GAIA DR1 reference frame
• a posteriori corrected astrometry based on sources in the Hubble Legacy Archive (HLA) images fitted to the Hubble Source Catalog (HSC ). These positions are primarily based on the Pan-STARRS catalog which is on the GAIA reference frame but with larger errors. These are only available for a subset of the ACS & WFC3 images that were public prior to November 2017.v3.0) frame, which is based on Gaia DR1
•    FIT-IMG-RefCat  : 'a posteriori' WCS matched to a reference catalog, where 'IMG' implies each FLT is separately aligned to the reference catalog
•    FIT-REL-RefCat   : 'a posteriori' WCS matched to a reference catalog, where 'REL' implies that FLTs within the same filter within the same visit are aligned before a global catalog alignment
•    FIT-SVM-RefCat : 'a posteriori' WCS matched to a reference catalog, where 'SVM' implies that FLTs in multiple filters within the same visit are aligned before a global catalog alignment

More details on interpreting the WCS names may be found on the Astrometry in Drizzled Products page. A list of possible 'active' WCSNAME values populated in the image headers is provided in Table 2Currently, the processing pipeline now includes a source finding step and cross-identification to a limited set of catalogs; namely, GAIA DR1 and GAIA DR2.  Additional astrometric catalogs (like Pan-STARRS, SDSS, 2MASS, GSC 2.4 etc) can be added to the pipeline in order to obtain the best a posteriori solution only after they have been vetted to provide high-enough quality alignment.  In addition to loading this headerlet to the database it will append all other available headerlets to the image before it gets archived and available to users.

Table 2: Sample WCS keywords inactive WCSNAME keyword values and the imagecorresponding WCSTYPE description header

Caveats

While the majority of calibrated HST data products are now aligned to a common absolute reference frame, further improvements may be possible via manual realignment using the drizzlepac tools.  This is particularly true for exposures acquired in the same visit where the WCSNAMEs does not contain the string 'FIT_SVM_GAIA'.  For standard drizzled data products:

• Short and long exposures obtained in the same visit may no longer be aligned due to potentially different number of Gaia matches.
• Exposures in different filters (eg. narrowband vs broadband) which were obtained in the same visit may no longer be aligned to one another, for example, if each filter had a different number of matches to Gaia.

Furthermore, grism images will now be offset from their direct image counterparts, where only the later of which may be aligned to an external reference catalog. In order to preserve relative alignment between grism and direct images, users may wish to back out the updated WCS solutions entirely, as described in Section 5 of the python notebook, 'Using updated astrometry solutions'.