Cosmic-Ray Rejection by Laplacian Edge Detection

Conventional algorithms for rejecting cosmic rays in single CCD exposures rely on the contrast between cosmic rays and their surroundings and may produce erroneous results if the point-spread function is smaller than the largest cosmic rays. This paper describes a robust algorithm for cosmic-ray rejection, based on a variation of Laplacian edge detection. The algorithm identifies cosmic rays of arbitrary shapes and sizes by the sharpness of their edges and reliably discriminates between poorly sampled point sources and cosmic rays. Examples of its performance are given for spectroscopic and imaging data, including Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 images.