ICORE is a command-line driven co-addition, mosaicking and resolution enhancement (HiRes) tool for creating science quality products from image data in FITS format and with World Coordinate System information following the FITS-WCS standard. It inclu
des preparatory steps such as image background matching, photometric gain-matching, and pixel-outlier rejection. Co-addition and/or HiResing can be performed in either the inertial WCS, or in the rest frame of a moving object. Three interpolation methods are supported: overlap-area weighting, drizzle, and weighting by the detector Point Response Function (PRF). The latter enables the creation of matched-filtered products for optimal point-source detection, but most importantly allows for resolution enhancement using a spatially-dependent deconvolution method. This is a variant of the classic Richardson-Lucy algorithm with the added benefit to simultaneously register and co-add multiple images to optimize signal-to-noise and sampling of the instrumental PSF. It can assume real (or otherwise flat) image priors, mitigate ringing artifacts, and assess the quality of image solutions using statistically-motivated convergence criteria. Uncertainties are also estimated and internally validated for all products. The software supports multithreading that can be configured for different architectures. Numerous example scripts are included (with test data) to co-add and/or HiRes image data from Spitzer-IRAC/MIPS, WISE and Herschel-SPIRE.
The Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) has provided a uniform photometric catalog to search for previously unknown red AGN and QSOs. We have extended the search to the southern equatorial sky by obtaining spectra for 1182 AGN candidates using the 6dF
multifibre spectrograph on the UK Schmidt Telescope. These were scheduled as auxiliary targets for the 6dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. The candidates were selected using a single color cut of J - Ks > 2 to Ks ~ 15.5 and a galactic latitude of |b|>30 deg. 432 spectra were of sufficient quality to enable a reliable classification. 116 sources (or ~27%) were securely classified as type 1 AGN, 20 as probable type 1s, and 57 as probable type 2 AGN. Most of them span the redshift range 0.05<z<0.5 and only 8 (or ~6%) were previously identified as AGN or QSOs. Our selection leads to a significantly higher AGN identification rate amongst local galaxies (>20%) than in any previous galaxy survey. A small fraction of the type 1 AGN could have their optical colors reddened by optically thin dust with A_V<2 mag relative to optically selected QSOs. A handful show evidence for excess far-IR emission. The equivalent width (EW) and color distributions of the type 1 and 2 AGN are consistent with AGN unified models. In particular, the EW of the [OIII] emission line weakly correlates with optical--near-IR color in each class of AGN, suggesting anisotropic obscuration of the AGN continuum. Overall, the optical properties of the 2MASS red AGN are not dramatically different from those of optically-selected QSOs. Our near-IR selection appears to detect the most near-IR luminous QSOs in the local universe to z~0.6 and provides incentive to extend the search to deeper near-IR surveys.
