NFEXTERN is an external IRAF package designed specifically for the reduction of NEWFIRM (an IR mosaic camera) instrument data, but which is also useful for other IR and mosaic reductions. It includes updated tasks found in MSCRED as well as catalog tools found in the ACE package. The package is now available from the downloads area and the ftp archive at NOAO.

See below for more information, please report any problems or comments.

The NFEXTERN package is used for reducing data from the NEWFIRM wide-field infrared imager. The package includes three sub-packages:

• ace - Astronomical Cataloging Environment
• msctools - General tools for working with multi-extension format (MEF) data
• newfirm - Tasks designed for reducing NEWFIRM data

  # ACE Sub-Package
  
           aceall - master segmentation and cataloging task
       acecatalog - catalog sources in images
                       - 	single image catalogs
                       - 	multiple image catalog using first image segmentation
          acediff - catalog sources in the difference of images
      aceevaluate - evaluate sources
         		     -  single image catalogs using reference catalog 
  			and segmentation
         		     -  multiple image catalog using reference catalog 
  			and segmentation
      acesegment - segment images into
                       -  sky images
                       -  object masks
                       -  sky subtracted images
  
       acefilter - filter catalogs and object masks
  
      acedisplay - display images with object mask isophote overlays
       acetvmark - display images with object filtered overlays
  
  
  # NEWFIRM Package contents
  
            cgroup - Group exposures
           combine - Combine exposures
          dcombine - Combine dark exposures
          fcombine - Combine flat exposures
           nfdproc - Process NEWFIRM dark exposures
        nfdeltasky - Fit and subtract residual sky background from NEWFIRM images
           nffocus - Determine best focus from NEWFIRM exposures
           nffproc - Process NEWFIRM dome flat field exposures
           nfgroup - Group NEWFIRM data in list files
       nflinearize - Linearize NEWFIRM exposures
            nflist - List NEWFIRM image parameters as derived by nfproc
            nfmask - Create data quality masks for NEWFIRM exposures
           nfoproc - Apply instrumental calibrations to NEWFIRM object exposures
            nfproc - General task for processing NEWFIRM data
          nfsetsky - Pair exposures for pairwise sky subtraction
          nfskysub - Subtract sky from NEWFIRM images
         nftwomass - Get 2MASS catalog data 
             nfwcs - Derive WCS for NEWFIRM exposures