WFC3 Python User Tools
See the WFC3 Team website and the WFC3 Data Handbook for more information.
Pipeline Software
A subset of the tools in the WFC3TOOLS package allows the user to employ the same software that STScI uses in the science calibration pipelines to calibrate WFC3 data from both the UVIS and IR detectors. This means the user can reprocess data with the latest software releases and/or reference files at will. This also means the user can customize the actual calibrations applied to the data by modifying the settings (e.g., OMIT vs PERFORM) of calibration steps in the primary header of the RAW FITS file.
The set of calibration tools resident in the WFC3TOOLS package are actually thin Python wrappers around C executables. While the C code is performing the heavy lifting, the Python wrapper acts as a convenience front-end function for the C code. In order to use the Python tools which are actually wrappers, the user must also obtain the HSTCAL package which contains the C version of the pipeline programs.
Note
While a calibration tool will be referenced generically in this discussion as,
for example, calwf3, the file actually being executed in C is calwf3.e and
in Python is calwf3.py.