In addition to standard products, a software called Herschel Interactive Processing Environment (HIPE) is offered to the astronomical community to reduce the Herschel data interactively (starting from level-0, -1 or -2 products), and to perform science analysis on them. HIPE has extensive on-line documentation that can be consulted by going to http://herschel.esac.esa.int/hcss-doc-12.0/ (for the HIPE 12 release due in early 2014) -- for the documentation for earlier releases, just change the number in the link to the relevant release version.
The Herschel Interactive Processing Environment (HIPE) enables the user to:
Access and retrieve data directly from the Herschel Science Archive, although it can also be retrieved independently from the HSA User Interface.
Perform interactive data reduction from raw data to publishable products, using Herschel-provided and user-developed routines, both in GUI form or in console-batch mode. In particular, it contains the same pipeline scripts and tasks as the SPG so that users can reproduce the standard processing and add improvements to it where necessary.
Visualise and manipulate image, spectral and spectral cube data.
Perform science analysis with a number of built-in standard and configurable graphical and/or console-based tools.
Get access to context-sensitive documentation and help.
The HIPE package does not require commercial licenses and is built to be platform-independent. It is based on Java and allows scripting programing in jython. The distribution includes source of software, calibration data and documentation. In addition, the astronomer can develop and integrate his/her own data processing algorithms within the system. Users with useful routines and algorithms are encouraged to provide them to the HSC, to be made available for possible re-use by other users.
Linux, Windows, or Mac installers for the latest user version of HIPE can be retrieved from the following link:
http://herschel.esac.esa.int/HIPE_download.shtml
A cycle of 4 releases per year was planned in the early phases of the mission, to accommodate the fast evolution of the instrument knowledge and data-processing algorithms. This was reduced to 2 releases per year later in the mission and will reduce to one per year from 2014 through to the end of post-Operations.
HIPE is open to external contributions. HIPE pipelines are organised in modules (called tasks), easily interchangeable by user-customised tasks. The Key Programme consortia and the astronomical community in general are encouraged to feed back their data products and share the tools and algorithms developed to produce them with the HSC for possible inclusion in the Data Processing system.
Data processing offers a number of interest groups for HIPE users. Details can be obtained from the Data Processing pages of the HSC Web page.