The NIRWALS instrument detrending software pipeline

Abstract

We describe the basic instrument detrending software for the NIRWALS spectrograph on the SALT telescope. Its basic purpose is to process multiple non-destructive reads of increasing exposure time into a final image reflecting the observed source intensity as expressed in counts (or electrons) per second, including its uncertainty. The output products of this pipeline can then be used to as input for follow-up data processing to apply wavelength solutions and extract fluxes for individual fibers. All pipeline code is implemented in python and can be obtained via common portals such as PyPI and GitHub. Additional information on how to use the code is available online at nirwals.readthedocs.io