This page provides information about pipeline processing and data types.

Raw data are selected, associated and inserted into a reduction mechanism which produces calibration products, science products and quality control information. This mechanism is the data processing pipeline. There is one such pipeline for each VLT and VLTI instrument.

Find general information about ESO reduction pipelines here.

The main functionalities of the pipelines are:

• create master calibration data,
• reduce science frames,
• extract QC information from the data.

QC Garching creates master calibration data from all raw calibration data. The raw data are stored in the ESO Archive and are public. They are quality-checked and used for data reduction and for trending.

Before October 2011 QC Garching processed science data, using the best available, quality-checked master calibration data. As of October 2011 this service is not offered anymore.

There are two instances of the data reduction pipelines:

• at the instrument workstation on Paranal, running in automatic mode,
• at HQ Garching, run by the Quality Control Group in the optimized mode.

The automatic mode is used for quick look purposes and for on-site quality control. It processes all raw data sequentially, as they arrive from the instrument. If calibration products ("master calibrations") are required for processing science data, these are taken from a database with standard, pre-manufactured calibration products. The automatic mode is not tuned to obtain the best possible results.

The optimized mode is the mode, which uses all data of a night, including the daytime calibrations. The calibration data are sorted and grouped according to their dependencies. Master calibration data are created. Their quality is checked.

Since pipeline version V2.3.9, two new recipes for the MOS part are available (called vmmoscalib and vmmosscience). These recipes have been applied to all data observed since August 2010. See the calibration and science recipe pages for further details

Find the description of VIMOS data processing and pipeline recipes here:

CRIRES pipeline
calibration
science reduction

STANDARD SETTINGS AND PIPELINE SUPPORT

All settings offered for observations are pipeline-supported with the exception of:

• MOS data using MR grism and OS-blue order sorting filter,
• MOS masks with tilted (non-horizontal) slits.
  

QC Garching processes the following VIMOS data:

• all calibration data, both in Service and Visitor Mode.
  

Raw VIMOS frames come in group of 4, one for each quadrant, and have the following CCD formats :

CCD formats are described here.

Master calibration files (master BIAS, master FLAT) have the prescan and overscan regions chopped off. Master files come in group of 4, one for each quadrant.

For 1x1 binning IMAGING master files have the format 2048x2440 px, MOS master files 2048x4096 px.

Raw calibration files, raw science files, and master calibration files, have the following approximate sizes in MB:

All packages are available to PIs via the User Portal. Until Period 87 (April to September 2011), runs performed in Service Mode received also a set of DVDs containing

• all raw science data,
• reduced science data,
• associated calibration products,
• associated raw calibration data,
• listings and logs,
• QC reports and OB reports.

  Data packages