DRAGONS implementation of the data reduction pipeline for the MAROON-X echelle spectrograph at Gemini-North.
Status: pre-release / work in progress. This pipeline is under active development. Master darks, master flats, dynamic wavelength calibration, and 2D to 1D echelle extraction with barycentric correction are functional. Full CalDB integration is still in progress.
Full documentation: https://maroonxdr.readthedocs.io/latest/
MAROON-X is a fiber-fed echelle-spectrograph installed on the Gemini-North Observatory meant to detect Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of mid- to late-M dwarves by measuring their radial velocities with 1 m/s radial velocity precision.
The red-optical, fiber-fed echelle-spectrograph has no movable parts and only one mode. At each observed wavelength the 5 fibers are arranged along the cross-dispersion direction. The middle three fibers are pupil-sliced fractions of the on-sky target fiber, the outer two fiber traces are an off-target on-sky fiber and a fiber known as the 'sim. cal. fiber' which can be fed calibration light during science frames (as well as during other frames). All observed light is split with a dichroic to a ‘blue arm’ (491-670nm) and a ‘red arm’ (649-920nm). Both arms terminate in CCD detectors with 16-bit 4400x4400 arrays, but the 'blue' detector has 4 reads and the 'red' detector has 2.
Recipes available in maroonxdr/maroonx/recipes/sq/:
| Recipe | Output |
|---|---|
recipes_BUNDLE.processBundle |
Split GOA bundle into red/blue arm frames |
recipes_DARK.makeProcessedDark |
Master dark |
recipes_FLAT_SPECT.makeProcessedFlat |
Master flat with stripe traces |
recipes_DYNAMIC_WAVECAL.makeDynamicWavecal |
Per-night etalon wavelength solution |
recipes_ECHELLE_SPECT.reduce |
Optimally extracted 1D spectra |
recipes_ECHELLE_SPECT.applyBarycentricCorrection |
Compute barycentric-correction |
The pipeline is currently distributed for development only — there is no PyPI/conda package yet.
git clone https://github.com/GeminiDRSoftware/MAROONXDR.git
cd MAROONXDR
pip install nox
nox -s devenv
source venv/bin/activate
nox -s devenv creates a Python 3.12 virtualenv, clones DRAGONS into
./DRAGONS/, and installs all pipeline + framework dependencies in
editable mode. A conda variant is available via nox -s devconda.
- User Manual — reducing MAROON-X data with this pipeline
- Tutorial — step-by-step walkthrough of a full reduction
- Programmer Manual — primitives, recipes, internals
All three are at https://maroonxdr.readthedocs.io/latest/.