FORS Long Slit Spectroscopy P2PP Tutorial

OVERVIEW

Observing in Service Mode:
Philosophy and Scheduling

Goal of this tutorial

In this tutorial you will prepare one OB aimed at taking a long slit spectrum of an elongated object which is too faint to be placed on the slit. Because it is so faint you will need to offset from a bright object, and you have also chosen to align the slit along the major axis of the faint object. In addition, due to the faintness of the object, sky subtraction is a serious issue for you and you have decided to split your exposure into 4 individual exposures, offsetting the object along the slit.

The sample OBs will illustrate the use of a variety of general features of P2PP and the kind of decisions you need to take while preparing an observing run, as well as some aspects that are specific to the preparation of OBs for FORS1/2.

1- Getting started

The Phase 2 process begins when you receive an e-mail message from the ESO Visiting Astronomers Section communicating to you that the allocation of time for the coming period has finalised and that the results can be consulted in the corresponding Web page. The communication from ESO contains a login ID and password that you need in order to consult that Web page. They are also your ID and password for the use of P2PP. You follow the instructions given by ESO and find that time was allocated to your run with FORS1. Therefore, you decide to start preparing your Phase 2 material. First, collect all the necessary documentation:

The FORS User Manual Package
The Service Mode instructions for the VLT.
The P2PP Documentation referred to above.

and proceed with the installation of P2PP in your machine if necessary. For the sake of this tutorial, we will hereafter use the following P2PP information:

P2PP ID: 52052
password: tutorial

This is a special account that ESO has set up so that users who do not have their own P2PP login data can still use P2PP and prepare example OBs. Note that this account cannot be used to prepare actual OBs intended to be executed. After logging in using the tutorial account, the P2PP main GUI will appear as follows:

Runs for a number of instruments appear in the Folders area, since the same tutorial account is used for all of them. Similarly, if you log in with your own P2PP ID, you will get the list of all the runs for which you are PI.

Now select the folder corresponding to the FORS1 Tutorial run, 60.A-9252(D). In this tutorial we assume that time was allocated in Service Mode. This is indicated by the SM letters that appear next to the Run ID of the FORS1 run. You can now start defining your OBs.

2- Creating the first OB

First, click on the New icon on the upper left side of the P2PP main GUI. This creates an entry under the Summaries area. The red dot next to the OB name means that it fails to pass some fundamental verification criteria, as may be expected from the fact that no template has been attached to the OB yet.

Click on the View icon. The View OB window appears:

This is the window where you will define the contents of your OB. First, let us give a name to the OB in the Name field in the upper-left part of the window. Since this OB will be LSS exposures of the faint galaxy named ``FaintGal 25a'', let us call it 'FaintGal 25a LSS'. Left-click in the field next to Name where it says ``No Name'', and write instead ``FaintGal 25a LSS'''.

Entering the target information

The Target Package, where the target information can be entered, is accessed by clicking on the Target tab at the bottom of the window:

In the Name field under the Target tab at the bottom, type the target name (FaintGal 25a).
For most other uses you would now type the coordinates of the object in the Right Ascension and Declination fields, together with their epoch and equinox in the Epoch and Equinox fields, respectively. However, since you are going to acquire a bright object, and then offset from that to the actual target, you will now enter the coordinates of the bright object (the offset object).
You should also enter the Class to which the target belongs, for archival purposes. Left-click in the field and use the pull-down menu to select (in this case) High_z_G (High redshift galaxy).
IMPORTANT NOTE: The last four fields of the Target Package are currently without any functionality, and are hence ignored by P2PP. The differential tracking rates for Moving Objects (usually only relevant for Solar System objects) is instead defined in the acquisition template (below), while the proper motion correction must be calculated and included in the target coordinates by the user.

Setting the constraint set

As stated in Section 1, we assume for the purposes of this tutorial that the program has been allocated time in Service Mode. Thus, you need to specify a constraint set for your OBs. You can do this by clicking on the Constraint Set tab next to the Target and filling the entries you find there:

Note that in your Phase 1 proposal you already specified some of these constraints (lunar illumination, seeing, transparency). You must make sure that none of the constraints specified in Phase 2 are more stringent than the corresponding ones specified at Phase 1.

Setting the time intervals

If appropriate, you can specify time windows where your OB can be executed by clicking on the Time Constraints tab. Click on the check-box at the far right next to the first row of the time interval to activate it.

If your observation can be executed in other, non-contiguous time windows, you could define up to five intervals in the same way as described.

The User Comments and Calibration Requirements fields are free text fields whose contents is self-explanatory. We will leave them blank in this example.

Defining the acquisition template

The first template in any science OB is the acquisition template. To define your acquisition template click

Template Type
``acquisition''

in the upper part of the OB window to highlight it. This will list all the acquisition templates available for FORS1 in the Template section next to it.

After reading the description of the templates in the FORS User Manual, you have determined that the FORS1_lss_acq_fast template is what you need to use for LSS acquisition. You, thus, click on this template in the Template list, and then on the Add button to the upper right. The keywords for the template will appear in the left middle section of the window, their current values to in the right middle section:

The functionality of this template is multiple. In parallel it will cause the presetting of the telescope to the coordinates in the Target Package, insertion of a filter into the light path, and the rotation of the rotater to the requested angle. After telescope preset the guideprobe will move to a guidestar it has picked from its internal catalogue and the main mirror will activate its reconfiguring. After two full loops of the active mirror an acquisition image will be obtained with the exposure time as defined in the first line of the template.

To enter values into the template, left-click on the entries in the right hand column. For entries written in BLACK there are default values, which are legal. The entries written in RED cannot be defaulted and must be filled in by you.

Your offset object is very bright, and after consultation with the FORS1 ETC you find that with an exposure time of 10 seconds you will obtain a S/N above 10 which is good enough for centering, and the object will not saturate. The latter condition is also very important for the centering, and determination of the correct exposure time to meet those two conditions is the responsibility of the user, i.e. you. You click in the field and enter ``10''.

The PA (East of North) of the major axis of your galaxy is 68 deg. Since you want the slit aligned with this PA, you must enter -68 for the rotater angle (which is minus the PA). You now click in that field and enter ``-68''. You want the standard resolution collimator so the next 6 fields can be left with the default values.

You now click on the filter field which will produce a pull down menu. Click on the V filter here because that was the filter you used to calculate the correct exposure time with the FORS1 ETC.

Finally you click on the slit field and select the 1.0 arcsec slit. The different slits are not only of different width, but they also have different positions in the focal plane. Therefore, you MUST here choose the same slit that you will later use for your science observations.

Note that during the acquisition one must also set the differential tracking rates for Moving Objects (usually only relevant for Solar System objects).

Placing your target on the slit

For imaging the field acquisition is simply to point the telescope. In the case of LSS, however, it is a three step process. The first step (to point the telescope and start guiding and active mirror) has now been accomplished. An acquisition image of the field has been taken, and the offset object will now be at the correct position to within 0.25 arcsecond. You have clearly marked the offset object, and the PA of your slit on the Finding Chart (FC) you have submitted, so the observer will now check on the acq image that the field rotation is indeed what you intended. The observer will also identify your offset object, and start the procedure which will move it to the exact position on the slit. To verify that this has been done successfully you will now obtain another image, but this time with the slit in place.

First click on Template Type ``science'' in the upper part of the OB window to highlight it. Then click the

Template
``FORS1_lss_obs_slit_fast''

and the Add button. Your OB will now look like this:

You will now enter the same exposure time as before, the same filter, and the same slit. The telescope has moved slightly since the first image, and in this second image the observer should be able to see the object precisely centred on the slit. After the observer has verified that this is indeed the case, the telescope will execute a ``blind'' offset as defined in this template. This allows you to place your faint galaxy exactly centred on the slit, without having to take a 30 minutes exposure to do it. You have therefore, on a deep image taken earlier, measured the exact offset between the offset object and your galaxy. The target is 3.85 arcsec to the East, and 5.21 arcsec to the South of the offset object. This is where you want the telescope to move, so you enter 3.85 and -5.21 in the two fields.

Defining the Observation Description

Once the target is acquired, the science observations begin. They are defined in a set of one or more templates that form the Observation Description (OD). For most observing modes there is a clear cut between the acquisition templates and the science templates, but for technical reasons the mandatory ``Through slit image'', which is taken as part of the acquisition, is formally a science template and therefore part of the OD.

You will now add a ``real'' science exposure by clicking on the Template ``FORS1_lss_obs_off_fast'' and the Add button.

You had decided to obtain a single spectrum at each of 4 different offset positions along the slit, so you click on the entry for Number of Tel. Offsets in ... and enter ``4''. You decided to separate them by 6 arcseconds, so you choose the offsets ``-9 6 6 6''. Each offset will be executed before the exposure, and always relative to the current position. The slit must be the 1.0 arcsec (as in the acq template), and you have decided that the resolution provided by the 300V+10 grism (440) is adequate. The blue part of the spectrum is not important for you, but you need the red part out to 865 nm. After careful inspection of the grism table in the FORS manual, you find that if you use the order separation filter GG435+31 you will get exactly the part of the spectrum you need. You may now return to the top entry which is the Exposure Time. Because it is a faint galaxy you could make the exposure as long as you would like without fear of saturation, but you MUST stay within the 1 hour limit of the lengt of an OB. You will have noticed that there is an entry

Execution
Time

in the top left corner. When you enter 559 seconds for the Exposure Time that Execution Time becomes 59 minutes, 57 seconds.

It may be useful in many cases to have an easy way of identifying an OD, like when having observations of a number of targets performed with identical instrument configuration and exposure times. The OD Name field in the View OB window allows you to define names for the ODs. In this example, we assign to the OD the name 300V + GG435+31. The OD name also appears in the Summaries area of the P2PP main GUI, thus allowing the identification at a glance of all OBs having ODs with the same name.

3- Adding more science templates

In principle you could now add another science template where you could obtain spectra of the same object with another grism. This option is only relevant for very bright objects or for imaging mode. You may add any number of templates if you wish, as long as the OB Execution time stays below 1 hour. There are two ways of adding a new template. You can either click Add or duplicate the one you have already completed. Try to click the

Duplicate
Col:6

button in the top-right corner of the window. In this case the values of the keywords in the newly added template will have the same values as in the one they were copied from, which is very convenient if you just want to edit a few of them. In this case you don't actually want it, so click the Delete Col:7 button to remove it again.

This, then, completes your first OB! If you followed all the instructions given so far, the View OB window should look like the figure above, while the P2PP main GUI now contains a summary of the OB you have created:

You can reshape the columns as indicated in the P2PP User Manual to view the full contents of each entry.

Additional OBs

By repeating the steps described above you can create all the OBs you need for your run. In particular, the Duplicate button in the P2PP main GUI duplicates an entire OB. This is a convenient and easy way to make new OBs from existing ones by editing just a few parameters.

4- Finishing the preparation and submitting the OBs

Once you are satisfied with the OBs you have made, in Service Mode you should submit them to the ESO database for revision and, finally, scheduling and execution. The P2PP main GUI displays the OBs that you have prepared. Highlight the ones you wish to submit with Ctrl+LeftButton and click on File->Check-in, or, in short, Ctrl+K, to enter them into the ESO database (you will be prompted for confirmation):

As a courtesy to the next user who follows this tutorial, we would like to ask you to finish these exercises by removing the OBs form the ESO Database. The P2PP User Manual gives you detailed instructions on how to do this. In short,

Select Check-out... from the File menu in P2PP
In the Database Browser window that opens, type 60.A-9252(D) in the Prog ID selection criterion
Click on the Query button on the lower left
Select all the OBs that appear in the display area after the query. Normally there should be your four submitted OBs only, but if another user has submitted other OBs from this same account without removing them afterwards you will see them as well.
Under the File menu in the View OB window, select Check-out

In this way the OBs will be removed from the ESO Database and will be left in your Local Cache only. From there you can delete them if you like by selecting them and choosing the Delete option under the File menu in the P2PP main GUI.