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The FIMS Tool

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What is FIMS?

The FORS Instrumental Mask Simulator (FIMS) is a SkyCat plugin to specify the FORS instrumental setup (e.g. the 19 slit positions in MOS) during Phase II Proposal Preparation. FIMS creates and manages the instrumental setup by Target Setup Files (TSFs). These TSFs can be loaded by the P2PP  tool to become part of an Observation Block (OB) for FORS. For further information, see the FIMS User Manual.

Important Note concerning Releases

The latest public release of FIMS is labeled P81, and corresponds to version 2.52 of the tool. This version can be used for Period 81 Observing Programmes (see below). It has solved several bugs discovered in P80 version of the tool. Therefore, for the users of Period 80 Observing Programmes:
- for visitor mode runs the current version 2.52 is preferred.
- for service mode runs, please contact usd-help@eso.org.
The information on the previous version of the tool is available.

FIMS is released as a tarball which also includes the appropriate SkyCat version (2.7.3) and an additional plugin for making ESO-compliant finding charts.

Supported Platforms

The latest version of the FORS Instrumental Mask Simulator (FIMS) is available for Linux platforms only. If you do not have access to a PC or workstation running this operating system, please contact the USD for assistance.

Downloading and installing FIMS

NOTE: Version "P81" can be used for FORS1 and FORS2 observing runs of Period 81.

Installation kit

Installing FIMS

Environment variables for FIMS

FIMS uses a number of environment variables, and provides defaults. They are all defined in the startup script <fims-install-directory>/bin/fims.sh Only FC_DIR can be overwritten by the setenv (or export in bash and ksh) command. All other variables are hardcoded in the <fims-install-directory>/bin/fims.sh startup script. Running this script for the first time will create the directory INS_USER and its subdirectories, LOG_DIR, SET_DIR, and PREP_DIR with the defaults given below, if these do not exist already.

How to Use FIMS

User Manual

The use of FIMS is described in the FIMS User Manual. It is indispensable for you to read this document, particularly if you are not familiar with the tool yet.

Quick start

FIMS can be started with fims.sh [instrument number] [skycat options] [DEBUG] Examples are (for user smith): When "fims.sh 1" is used, the following output will appear :

Calling FIMS for FORS1...

Remember to copy any MXU technical masks to /home/smith/.fims/SET



  W E L C O M E     T O     F I M S
 -----------------------------------

 +----------------+                +------------------+
 | FIMS      2.52 |----plugin----> | SkyCatTool 2.7.3 |
 +----------------+                +------------------+

 +------------------------------------------+
 | last checkin : 2007/12/04 GD 15:27:25 UT | INPUT : /home/smith/.fims/PREP
 | now is       : 2007/12/18 GD 17:33:26 UT | OUTPUT: /home/smith/.fims/SET
 | FIMS requires: SkyCat 2.7.3              | LOGS  : /home/smith/.fims/LOG
 +------------------------------------------+


skycat -with_grid 1 -scrollbars 1 -rtd 0  ...
Loading the graphics features plugin...
Loading the FIMS plugin...for FORS1

A FITS image taken with FORS2 (tar.gz file; 5.0 Mbytes) is available for practising with FIMS.

Verification of FIMS

Problem and Bug Reports

Please report all FIMS problems and bugs to the ESO User Support Department (USD).

WCS keywords in wide field mosaics

At present FIMS does not support WCSs where the CRPIXn keyword value is outside the range 0 < CRPIXn <= NAXISn (ie. outside of the field of view). This is ONLY important for you if you, instead of having obtained new pre-imaging with FORS, are going to use a sub-image extracted from a large field, for instance from a mosaic or from wide field imaging.

This means that despite the fact that the global image may have correctly set WCS, if the mosaic is split and only part of it used for mask preparation with FIMS the error message "Error: out of coordinate range" will appear if that part of the mosaic does not contain the reference pixel of the center (CRPIX1 and CRPIX2 keywords).


Pre-images taken with FORS1/2 with PA=+/-180 degrees

In case of pre-imaging taken with FORS1/FORS2 with position angle PA=+/-180 degrees, the mask created by FIMS may be wrong. Therefore we strongly discourage the use of PA=+/-180 deg for pre-imaging. If you already have images taken with FORS at this position angle and need to use them to prepare the masks with FIMS, please contact usd-help@eso.org.


Right handed WCS (North up, East to the right)

FIMS does not treat properly the images taken with other telescopes/instruments if they have WCS oriented with North up and East to the right. In order to prepare a correct FIMS setup files a possible work-around is to edit the WCS,and therefore modify the image so that it has the "standard" orientation with North up and East to the left. This should be done with care in case of significant distortions in the images. If unsure of the distortions, it is better to take the new pre-images with FORS1/2.


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