Introduction to the Roman Wide Field Instrument (WFI) Imaging Data including suggestions for users new to WFI data on how to get started.

Introduction

This handbook provides detailed information on the calibration, retrieval, format, and use of data from the Roman Space Telescope Wide Field Instrument (WFI). Additional information on the design and performance of the WFI, including topics related to anomalies and calibration effects, may be found in the WFI Instrumentation User Guides.

Information related specifically to the WFI spectroscopic mode (e.g., wavelength/flux calibration, 1-D extraction) or high-level microlensing exoplanet science will be maintained by the Science Support Center at IPAC. 

Where to Start

For new Roman users unfamiliar with WFI data, we strongly urge beginning with the WFI Data Format documentation on the available WFI data products. 

Once users are familiar with the WFI data format, please proceed to the documentation on Accessing WFI Data, which includes information on how to best retrieve WFI data for analysis, as well as other advanced topics. Due to the large volume of WFI data, we encourage users to review this documentation and think carefully about how they will interact with WFI data files. Such advance consideration and planning may obviate later problems. Different data products from the WFI may be stored either on-premises at STScI and/or in an Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 cache, though both are equally accessible via the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) and the Data Access Application Programming Interface (DAAPI). In addition to the science data products, this section of the handbook includes information on how to access calibration reference files via the Calibration Reference Data System (CRDS) as well as engineering telemetry data in the Calibrated Engineering Database.

Finally for users with questions about the science data pipelines including romancal and resample , please see the section on the Roman STScI Data Pipelines. This section of the handbook contains detailed information on how the data are processed, any important caveats that may have subtle effects in the data, and tutorials for how to run the science data pipelines. Please note that we do not expect most users to need to re-calibrate WFI data, though some advanced users with particular science use cases may need to run customized data pipelines. Please also consult the WFI Imaging Mode User Guide for more information on the properties of the WFI detectors.

For additional questions not answered in this article, please contact the Roman Help Desk at STScI.