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arXiv · astro-ph/0102330

Cosmic shear from STIS Pure Parallels: I Data

Abstract

Following the second HST servicing mission in 1997 when the STIS instrument was installed and the capability for parallel observations was enhanced, a substantial archive of non-proprietary parallel data has been accumulating. In this paper, we discuss the use of unfiltered STIS imaging data for a project that requires deep observations along as many independent lines-of-sight as possible. We have developed a technique to determine which datasets in the archive can safely be co-added together and have developed an iterative co-addition technique which enabled us to produce 498 high-quality, deep images. The principal motivation for this work is to measure the Cosmic Shear on small angular scales and a value derived from these data will be presented in a subsequent paper. A valuable by-product of this work is a set of high quality combined fields which can be used for other projects. The data are publicly available at http://www.stecf.org/projects/shear/

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N. Pirzkal, L. Collodel, T. Erben, R. A. E. Fosbury, W. Freudling, H. Haemmerle, B. Jain, A. Micol, J. -M. Miralles, P. Schneider, S. Seitz, S. D. M. White. 2001-06-15. Cosmic shear from STIS Pure Parallels: I Data. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361%3A20010836

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