updatewcs¶
UPDATEWCS applies corrections to the WCS of an HST science file and adds reference information as header keywords and fits file extensions so that a science file contains all necessary information to represent astrometrically precise positions. The order in which the corrections are applied is important and is as follows:
- Detector to Image Correction
- Apply Time dependent distortion (if applciable)
- Recomputing the basic WCS
- Apply Velocity Aberration Correction
- Apply polynomial distortion through the SIP coefficients
- Apply non-polynomial distortion
Mathematically the entire transformation from detector to sky coordinates is described by:
where f(u’,v’) and g(u’,v’) represent the polynomial distortion correction specified as
where
- x’, y’ are the initial coordinates x,y with the 68th column correction applied through the DET2IM convention
- u’,v’ are the DET2IM-corrected coordinates relative to CRPIX1,CRPIX2
- LT<sub>x</sub>, LT<sub>y</sub> is the residual distortion in the lookup tables written to the header using the FITS Distortion Paper lookup table convention
- A, B are the SIP coefficients specified using the SIP convention