Observing, calibrating and reducing near-infrared imaging mosaics

In near-infrared bands, co-adding and tiling of astronomical imaging datasets require a sufficiently high calibration quality (flat fielding, background subtraction). Here we present a complete workflow for obtaining imaging mosaics with the MMT and Magellan Infrared Spectrograph (MMIRS) operated at the 6.5-m MMT in Arizona and open-source add-on tools developed for the MMIRS pipeline for preparation and data reduction of mosaic observations. We describe pre-observing actions, such as design of dithering patterns and mosaic layouts and post-processing steps to perform absolute astrometric and photometric calibration, and also generate HiPS maps to display the final data product in Aladin / Aladin Lite.
Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Proceedings of the conference "Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XXXI" held (24 - 28 October 2021) in Cape Town, South Africa