Anyone have any experience in removal of diffraction spikes in difference data? We have HSC with very good templates, and very good subtractions (the pipeline is great in that sense). But because of the sheer number of stars in the frame (galactic plane…) there are a large number of diffraction spikes left over that affect later moving object false detection rates. Removal of those spikes would be extremely beneficial to our pipelines. Alas I have no experience with that. Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated!
For Pan-STARRS, we masked diffraction spikes using a reference catalog to provide the source positions, and an empirical model for the length of the diffraction spikes as a function of brightness. To my knowledge, that empirical model does not currently exist for HSC.
Thanks Paul. I get the feeling we’ll be doing something similar.
Cheers