Description

The Data Quality (DQ) initialization step in the calibration pipeline populates the DQ mask for the input dataset. Flag values from the appropriate static mask (“MASK”) reference file in CRDS are copied into the “PIXELDQ” array of the input dataset, because it is assumed that flags in the mask reference file pertain to problem conditions that affect all groups for a given pixel.

The actual process consists of the following steps:

• Determine what MASK reference file to use via the interface to the bestref utility in CRDS.

• Copy the input product into a RampModel (if it isn’t already) for processing through pipeline. This will create “pixeldq” and “groupdq” arrays (if they don’t already exist).

• Propagate the DQ flags from the reference file DQ array to the science data “PIXELDQ” array using numpy’s bitwise_or function.

Note that when applying the dq_init step to guide star data, the flags from the MASK reference file are propagated into the guide star dataset “dq” array, instead of the “pixeldq” array. The step identifies guide star data based on the following exposure type (exposure.type keyword attribute) values: WFI_WIM_ACQ, WFI_WIM_TRACK, WFI_WSM_ACQ1, WFI_WSM_ACQ2, WFI_WSM_TRACK.