Pan-STARRS Pixel Analysis : Source Detection and Characterization

Abstract

Over 3 billion astronomical objects have been detected in the more than 22 million orthogonal transfer CCD images obtained as part of the Pan-STARRS1 $3\pi$ survey. Over 85 billion instances of those objects have been automatically detected and characterized by the Pan-STARRS Image Processing Pipeline photometry software, psphot. This fast, automatic, and reliable software was developed for the Pan-STARRS project, but is easily adaptable to images from other telescopes. We describe the analysis of the astronomical objects by psphot in general as well as for the specific case of the 3rd processing version used for the first two public releases of the Pan-STARRS $3\pi$ survey data, DR1 & DR2.