CEERS Epoch 1 NIRCam Imaging: Reduction Methods and Simulations Enabling Early JWST Science Results
Abstract
We present the data release and data reduction process for the Epoch 1 NIRCam observations for the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS). These data consist of NIRCam imaging in six broadband filters (F115W, F150W, F200W, F277W, F356W and F444W) and one medium band filter (F410M) over four pointings, obtained in parallel with primary CEERS MIRI observations (Yang et al. in prep). We reduced the NIRCam imaging with the JWST Calibration Pipeline, with custom modifications and reduction steps designed to address additional features and challenges with the data. Here we provide a detailed description of each step in our reduction and a discussion of future expected improvements. Our reduction process includes corrections for known pre-launch issues such as 1/f noise, as well as in-flight issues including snowballs, wisps, and astrometric alignment. Many of our custom reduction processes were first developed with pre-launch simulated NIRCam imaging over the full 10 CEERS NIRCam pointings. We present a description of the creation and reduction of this simulated dataset in the Appendix. We provide mosaics of the real images in a public release, as well as our reduction scripts with detailed explanations to allow users to reproduce our final data products. These represent one of the first official public datasets released from the Directors Discretionary Early Release Science (DD-ERS) program.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2211.02495,
title = {CEERS Epoch 1 NIRCam Imaging: Reduction Methods and Simulations Enabling Early JWST Science Results},
author = {Micaela B. Bagley and Steven L. Finkelstein and Anton M. Koekemoer and Henry C. Ferguson and Pablo Arrabal Haro and Mark Dickinson and Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe and Casey Papovich and Pablo G. Pérez-González and Nor Pirzkal and Rachel S. Somerville and Christopher N. A. Willmer and Guang Yang and L. Y. Aaron Yung and Adriano Fontana and Andrea Grazian and Norman A. Grogin and Michaela Hirschmann and Lisa J. Kewley and Allison Kirkpatrick and Dale D. Kocevski and Jennifer M. Lotz and Aubrey Medrano and Alexa M. Morales and Laura Pentericci and Swara Ravindranath and Jonathan R. Trump and Stephen M. Wilkins and Antonello Calabrò and M. C. Cooper and Luca Costantin and Alexander de la Vega and Taylor A. Hutchison and Ray A. Lucas and Elizabeth J. McGrath and Xin Wang and Stijn Wuyts},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.02495},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
27 pages, 14 figures, submitted to ApJ. Accompanying CEERS public Data Release 0.5 available at ceers.github.io/releases.html