The general aspects of the pipelines are not repeated here, they can be found on the UVES-Echelle page.

The UVES pipeline is designed to reduce raw SCIENCE spectra taken in Echelle mode to a level almost free from instrumental signature. Formally, there are two pipelines: the UVES-Echelle pipeline, and the FLAMES/UVES (or UVES MOS) pipeline. The UVES-Echelle pipeline is handled here. The UVES MOS pipeline is handled here.

On Paranal, the quick-look pipeline makes an attempt to automatically reduce all science data taken in MOS mode. The reduction is performed using standard calibration solutions from a local calibration database which is refreshed every now and then. In UVES-MOS, only three standard settings are offered.

These types of raw science files exist in MOS mode:

Recipe. A science raw file is pipeline-processed by the pipeline recipe flames_obs_scired. The bias level and the interorder background are subtracted. Every order of the spectrum is extracted, flat-fielded, de-convolved for fibre cross talk, wavelength calibrated, and corrected for differences in fibre transparency. Finally, the orders are merged.

Extraction. The UVES-MOS pipeline knows two extraction modes:

• optimum (OPT)
• average (AVG)

Optimum extraction is the default extraction mode. It provides an optimized signal-to-noise ratio. Average (or standard) extraction is an alternative mode which simply averages any signal along the slit and above the sky background level. It may be a good choice in case of failure of the optimum extraction, e.g. at high exposure level.

Optimum extraction. The pipeline assumes a Gaussian profile for the cross-dispersion flux distribution. This procedure

• yields optimum S/N,
• automatically discriminates against any non-Gaussian components in the cross-dispersion profile.
  

This means specifically

• automatic sky subtraction (since the sky background is treated as a pedestal),
• automatic cosmic ray rejection (whenever the hit has a non-Gaussian distribution),
• automatic sky emission line removal (since these fill up the whole slit and have a rectangular profile).

Simultaneous calibration. UVES-MOS offers the possibility to use one fibre for measuring a ThAr spectrum simultaneously with the science observations. The science recipe cross-correlates the simultaneous ThAr spectrum with a template spectrum and determines a velocity shift of the observation with respect to the template. The same calculation is performed with the day-time ThAr calibration.

The cross-correlation is calculated on each order separately. The results are written in the CORVEL_TAB file. The average velocity shift (in km/s) with respect to the template is written in the QC.CCF.POSAVG header keyword; QC.CCF.POSRMS contains the rms of the average and QC.CCF.POSOFF the shift of the day-time ThAr spectrum with respect to the template.

Products. These are the reduction products:

• one FIB_SCI_INFO_TAB tfits table containing information about the fibre positions
• one MWXB_SCI file per CCD (i.e. two files); this is the merged and wavelength-calibrated extracted spectrum that has been corrected for different throughputs of the fibres; it is a 2D image with wavelength on x-axis and fibre on y-axis
• one ERR_MWXB_SCI file per CCD; this is the errorbar file corresponding to MWXB_SCI
• one XB_SCI file per CCD; this is a 3D data cube containing the extracted and throughput-corrected spectrum for each order
• one MWXB_SCI_RAW file per CCD; similar to MWXB_SCI but without correction for fibre throughput
• one ERR_MWXB_SCI_RAW file per CCD; the corresponding errorbar file
• one XB_SCI_RAW per CCD; extracted and not throughput-corrected spectra for each order
• in case of SimCal data, one CORVEL_TAB table per CCD containing the results of the cross-correlation.

The successful execution of science reduction requires a complete set of valid calibration products available.

All calibration data are processed by QC Garching and are quality-checked. Certified calibration products are stored in the archive.