Improving Herschel imaging datasets

The Herschel Space Observatory enabled a deep and detailed look into the far-infrared universe and even though the mission ended in May 2013, the rich archive is full of data to be analysed. The Herschel data reduction pipelines have progressed to give good results for most types of observations, but for other, more specialized programmes, improved image reconstruction tools and methods need to be applied to fully exploit the telescope's unique sensitivity and spatial resolution. This is the case for post-main-sequence objects observed with Her- schel/PACS as part of the MESS sample. Here, the standard pipeline as well as most map-makers cannot handle the bright central source surrounded by faint dust emission well. We compare the six standard map-making tools for Herschel observations and show how an improved astrometry can produce better maps. Our data processing steps can be applied to the standard pipeline as well as to external mappers based on inverse techniques.