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p3d is a general data-reduction tool that is intended to be used with data of fiber-fed integral field spectrographs (IFSs). This tool can be useful for people who have access to astronomical data of such an instrument. Data-reduction tasks, which are performed by p3d, convert raw data of CCD detectors into extracted spectra that can thereafter be used for scientific purposes.

In October 2010, at the STScI-workshop "IFUs in the era of JWST", Christer Sandin gave a presentation with the title "Integral-Field Spectroscopy Data Reduction Made Easy with p3d". You can watch the presentation if you follow this link.

Our aim has been to write a user-friendly tool that will reduce the time that is spent performing repetitive tasks in IFS data-reduction; the number of spectra of these instruments is usually several hundred to several thousand. p3d can combine several images (exposures) into one image, can extract spectra using three different methods, does full error propagation through all steps, and provides graphical tools for inspection of both intermediate and final results. The current version of p3d handles the following five data-reduction tasks:

Creation of a master-bias image.
Automatic finding and tracing of spectra on the detector.
Creation of a dispersion mask for wavelength calibration.
Creation of a dataset that is used to normalize (flat field) the extracted spectra.
Extraction of object data, using different extraction methods.
p3d also provides several graphical tools to inspect the raw data and the outcome of the different tasks. One task that is important when calculating scientific spectra is flux calibration; this task is currently not part of p3d, but can be easily performed on output data; using, for example, IRAF.