The SRCTYPE keyword is used by the calibration pipeline for spectroscopic modes to determine whether the spectral data should be treated as a point or extended source. This instance of the SRCTYPE keyword is used for multi-source modes (that allow multiple target specifications): NIRCam and NIRISS Wide Field Slitless Spectrocopy (WFSS), NIRSpec fixed-slit, and NIRSpec Multi-Object Spectroscopy (MOS). For these modes, SRCTYPE is set for each target/slit instance. For the NIRCam and NIRISS WFSS modes the values are determined from the characteristics of each source detected in accompanying direct images of the field. For NIRSpec fixed-slit mode, the user can specify the type of the source located in the primary slit in the APT observation template, which is passed to the calibration pipeline via the SRCTYAPT keyword; this value is copied to the SRCTYPE keyword. If the user did not specify a value in the APT, the calibration pipeline uses a default setting. Non-primary slits for NIRSpec fixed-slit mode are always set to SRCTYPE='EXTENDED'. For NIRSpec MOS, the source types are set during construction of the source catalog in the MSA Planning Tool (MPT) and passed along to the calibration pipeline via the PPSDB nirspec_sources table and the MSA meta data file constructed from the PPSDB information.
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| data type | string |
| enumerated Values | not defined |
| units | |
| example | |
| default value | unknown |
| special processing | not defined |
| source | Calibration Software |
| software source | |
| calculation | |
| DB destination | ['ScienceSlit.srctype'] |
| data type in DB | nvarchar(15) |
| instrument | NIRCAM, NIRISS, NIRSPEC |
| mode | NRS_MSASPEC, NRS_FIXEDSLIT, NIS_WFSS, NRC_WFSS |
| product level | 2b |
| FITS hdu | SCI |
| FITS header section | Slit parameters |