Bright Star Subtraction Pipeline for LSST: A Review of Progress
, Posters

The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will reach unprecedented surface brightness depths by imaging the southern sky, which provides a spectacular opportunity for studying the Low Surface Brightness (LSB) structures around galaxies. The presence of bright stars in deep images can result in over-estimation of the sky background if the bright stars are not robustly modeled to large enough radii and subtracted prior to the background measurements. This over-estimation results in over-subtraction of the sky background, which destroys the LSB structures in deep images of LSST. To prevent destroying LSB structures when subtracting the sky background, this work aims to develop Bright Stars Subtraction pipeline for the LSST deep images. We are currently in the process of developing a pipeline that robustly models the star profile of bright stars out to several hundred arcseconds radius and uses the modeled profile to subtract bright stars from deep images prior to the sky background subtraction process in the LSST data reduction pipeline. Our work includes testing the pipeline on deep images from currently available surveys and simulated data to evaluate its power in subtracting bright stars while preserving LSB structures. Once completed, the Bright Stars Subtraction pipeline will be a valuable tool for the LSB studies in the LSST as well as upcoming deep imaging surveys.

See also:

Research Software Engineer with a focus on data reduction pipelines.
PhD in Astrophysics with a focus on Low Surface Brightness structures.