Installing MIRAGE

The easiest way to get a working installation of Mirage is to use one of the conda environment files in the repository to create a conda environment. There are two environment files in the package. Use the file that matches your operating system.

1. mirage_environment_linux.yml
2. mirage_environment_osx.yml

Create a conda environment using the environment file

First, be sure that your conda installation is up to date. Exit the current environment if necessary.

conda deactivate
conda update conda

Next, use the appropriate environment file for your operating system to create a new environment.

conda env create -f mirage_environment_osx.yml

Activate the environment

conda activate mirage_osx

Install Mirage

In the top-level Mirage directory:

python setup.py install

Install Supporting Packages

NIRCam_Gsim – Support for Wide Field Slitless observations

GRISMCONF – Support for Wide Field Slitless observations

For each of these packages, clone or download the repository, cd into the top-level directory, and then install using:

python setup.py install

Reference Files and MIRAGE_DATA Environment Variable

In addition to the code itself, there is a set of reference files that accompany Mirage, and are necessary for Mirage to function. These files include dark current ramps, grism throughput curves, cosmic ray and PSF libraries, as well as more standard JWST reference files, such as superbias images, linearity correction coefficients, etc.

Instructions for downloading the reference files are provided on the reference files page.