NICMOSlook is a computer program to analyze spectral data obtained with the

Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer The Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) is a Measuring instrument, scientific instrument for infrared astronomy, installed on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), operating from 1997 to 1999, and from 2002 to 2008. Images produ ...

(NICMOS) on board the

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the Orbiting Solar Observatory, first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most ...

(HST). The program originated as ''Calnic C'', which was designed at the

Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility image:Stecf colour wb.png, right The Space Telescope – European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF) was an institution which provided a number of support and service functions primarily for European observers of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HS ...

(ST-ECF) and programmed in IDL. NICMOSlook is available from their website. One of the capabilities of NICMOS is its

grism A grism (also called a grating prism) is a combination of a prism and grating arranged so that light at a chosen central wavelength passes straight through. The advantage of this arrangement is that one and the same camera can be used both for i ...

mode for slitless spectrometry at low resolution. Typically, a direct image is taken in conjunction with grism images for wavelength calibration. NICMOSlook is a highly specialized interactive tool to extract one-dimensional spectra (flux versus wavelength) from such data. NICMOSlook is most commonly used for small amounts of data when users prefer to have full control of all the parameters for individual spectrum extraction, or for cases where Calnic C did not extract the spectra satisfactorily. Unlike Calnic C, NICMOSlook requires the user to determine the best way to find an object and provides a number of different ways to accomplish this. Similarly, the user decides whether to use a weighting appropriate for point sources or weighting by the size of the object for the extraction of the spectra.

Calnic C

''Calnic C'' is a non-interactive counterpart, a program that performs a subset of NICMOSlook's functions with a "pipelined" approach. Maintenance of Calnic C stopped in 2000 and the program is now considered to be obsolete.

External links

ST-ECF page for NICMOSlook
{{Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Space Telescope Astronomy software