The longer integration times used in recording spectroscopic datasets make cosmic rays and random hot pixels more of a problem than for imaging datasets. These undesirable features must be interactively removed before they are smeared when the curved spectrum is straightened.
The redgspec task can be used to interactively clean bad pixels by setting the clean flag. This invokes the IRAF imedit task to first clean the object image (.oim file extension) and the associated sky images (.aim, .bim, or .sim file extensions). After the image to be cleaned has been displayed, center the image display cursor on the bad pixel and type l. Type l again to correct a single bad pixel, or move to another pixel and type l again to correct a rectangular region of bad pixels. Type q to terminate cleaning the current image and move to cleaning the next image.
Users should become familiar with the zoom and pan functions of ximtool. The IRAF imedit task does not function properly with saoimage operating under Solaris 2.