Science data for SINFONI are taken for scientific reasons. In addition they are used for the following purpose:

• assess the instrument status

Science raw data are contaminated by well known instrumental signatures and by the terristrical atmosphere. Both effects are eliminated from science raw data by using master calibrations. The day-time calibrations like DARK, FLAT, WAVE are to extract the instrumental signatures while the night time calibrations using standard stars are to monitor the point spread function and the telluric absorption lines, both effects are due to the terrestrial atmosphere and are changing more frequently than the instrumental signatures.On special request by the user, day-time calibrations can be scheduled during night time, on charge of the allocated science observing time. nighttime (so-called attached calibrations). Day-time calibrations and the observation of telluric standard stars come for free. See the User's manual for details.

From P75 (April 2005) on four science templates are supported, they differ only by the pointing offset sequence (the jitter strategy). Science frames come as IFS stacks. Some or all raw frames of a raw stack (on observation block) show DPR.TYPE == OBJECT, the others (or none of the stack) show DPR.TYPE == SKY. If no SKY frames are part of the science stack, sky emission lines cannot be reduced. This is different to ISAAC long-slit spectroscopy, where the ABBA nodding sequence is used to get rid of the spectrally resolved night sky. As for ISAAC and NACO imaging , the SINFONI GenericOffset template allows for telescope offsets, exceeding a so-called jitter box. The correlation star retrieved from the first raw frame and used for the rest of the stack could get lost by being jittered out of the jitter box. For this reason, the rarely used science case of mosaicing is not supported by the pipeline.

The following types of raw science data exist for the SINFONI

mode DPR TYPE template comment IFS,NODDING OBJECT SKY SINFONI_ifs_obs_AutoJitterOffset SINFONI_ifs_obs_FixedSkyOffset SINFONI_IFS_obs_GenericOffset   IFS,JITTER OBJECT SINFONI_ifs_obs_AutoJitter

Recipes and products

The following SINFONI science products are created from raw science files (click here for a complete overview of calibration files and recipes):

Association rules

For the reduction of science data calibration products are required. The selection of appropriate calibration products follow the association rules.

Naming scheme

After production and certification, the science products are renamed after a scheme which includes type, creation data and relevant SINFONI setting.

SINFONI science frames require a cascading scheme where the mutual dependencies of products and raw frames have to be respected. Some products (master darks, linearity bad pixel map, distortion table) can be produced from raw files only, but most products require the prior generation of other calibration products. The proper sequence of all these production steps is called the calibration cascade.

Within that cascade, all products are checked with respect to their quality and their relationship in time. This means e.g. that a master flat is not only generated using an arbitrary quality-checked frame, but that specific frame is chosen which at the moment of processing is closest in time.

All products created by QC Garching follow the science reduction cascade.