Introduction

The purpose of this notebook is to provide some examples of how to use the WebbPSF trending API for JWST WFS&C Data. Code excerpts and text extracted from: https://webbpsf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/jwst_measured_opds.html

Defining terms

For more information on JWST Acronyms and abbreviations please see: JWST Acronyms and Abbreviations

For more information on JWST Wavefront Sensing and Control: Wavefront Sensing & Control

Installation

Anaconda is the recommended Python distribution for this notebook. If you do not have it already, download Miniconda and install it (Python 3.7+ only). The instructions below assume you do not want webbpsf in your default Anaconda environment (base), but if you do want it, you can skip the part where you create a new conda environment.

In a Bash shell, create a new conda environment for webbpsf using Python 3 and then switch to that environment (skip this if you want to use default base environment, but using base is not recommended):

conda create -n wssenv python=3.8 conda activate wssenv

In that same environment, install the following dependencies using pip:

pip install astropy pip install webbpsf

Installing WebbPSF and required data files

Follow installation instructions on WebbPSF

If you install via pip or manually, you must install the data files yourself.

Files containing such information as the JWST pupil shape, instrument throughputs, and aperture positions are distributed separately from WebbPSF. To run WebbPSF, you must download these files and tell WebbPSF where to find them using the WEBBPSF_PATH environment variable.

1. Download the following file: webbpsf-data-LATEST.tar [approx. 70 MB]

2. Untar webbpsf-data-LATEST.tar.gz into a directory of your choosing.

3. Set the environment variable WEBBPSF_PATH to point to that directory. e.g.