The Quality Control Group in Garching provides quality checks of the SINFONI data. These checks are part of a more general Quality Control (QC) process. They are executed on raw data as well as on pipeline-processed data.

The QC checks consist of

• Quality Control Level 0 (QC0)
• Quality Control Level 1 (QC1)
• Health Check
• Trending.

QC0 involves checks whether the user-defined observational constraints (the constraint set) have been respected during the observation. The QC0 checks are done on raw data.

The SM observer receives a QC0 report which lists all the programme-specific science files, their user-defined constraints (as read from the OB Repository which was filled from P2PP), and the actual QC0 parameters during observation (as read from the Ambient Database which is fed from the Ambient Site Monitor).

The data are checked for the following constraints:

• airmass,
• moon distance,
• fractional lunar ilumination (FLI),
• seeing.

QC0 reports as part of a service mode package is shown on the SINFONI QC ServiceMode page

Quality Control Level 1 consists of quality checks on pipeline-processed data.

Most of the QC1 parameters are provided by the SINFONI pipeline, a minor set is measured by post-pipeline procedures, on master calibration files and reduced files. The purpose of measuring QC1 parameters in general is to check the technical performanc of the instrument:

• assess the quality of calibration products (e.g. noise properties, dispersion solution),
• compare with expected/nominal values (e.g. resolution),
• assess the performance of the instrument (e.g. efficiency),
• monitor efficiency of master creation process (e.g. reduction of random noise).

The result of the QC1 process is used to

• decide whether a master calibration is certified or rejected,
• assess the quality of the reduction process.
  

All master calibration data created by QC Garching are quality-checked. Apart from measuring QC1 parameters, these files are also checked for "unusual" effects like overexposure, misalignment of gratings etc.

The QC1 parameters are ingested in a central public database.

Trending is monitoring QC1 parameters over time (e.g. detector ron as function of time).

Main results are:

• monitor instrument health,
• detect long-term trends,
• detect sudden changes (e.g. misalignment of gratings).

There is a easy to use public SINFONI QC1 database .

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P74 (2004-10-01 ... 2005-03-31)

• In this period the instrument is not yet offered. Several commissioning runs, garantied obsering runs, and Science Verification runs take place. The major instrument change is the upgrade of the detector, that takes place in Feb 2005.

P75 (2005-04-01 ... 2005-09-31)