VLT Instrument Pipelines
Introduction
In collaboration with the various instrument consortia, the Pipeline Systems Department has undertaken to implement data reduction pipelines for the most commonly used VLT/VLTI instrument modes. These data reduction pipelines have three main purposes:
- Data quality control - pipelines are used to produce the quantitative information necessary to monitor instrument performance (see the ESO Quality Control web pages for more information).
- Master calibration product creation - pipelines are used to produce master calibration products (e.g. combined bias frames, super-flats, wavelength dispersion solutions).
- Science product creation - using pipeline-generated master calibration products, science products are produced for supported instrument modes (e.g. combined ISAAC jitter stacks; bias-corrected, flat-fielded FORS images, wavelength-calibrated UVES spectra). The accuracy of the science products can be limited both by the quality of the available master calibration products and by the algorithmic implementation of the pipelines themselves. In particular, adopted reduction strategies may not be suitable for all scientific goals. Therefore, ESO assumes no responsibility for the usefulness of reduced data for any specific scientific project.
Pipelines Running Environments: Gasgano and Esorex
Home users can use Gasgano, a Java-based data file organizer developed and maintained by ESO. It can be used to manage and organize in a systematic way the astronomical data observed and produced by all VLT compliant telescopes. Gasgano is a graphics-based software tool for organising and viewing data files produced by the VLT Control System. Gasgano offers functionalities for data viewing, grouping, sorting, classification, searching, and filtering of data. And, of course, Gasgano will run any requested CPL recipe on the selected data.
Esorex, a command-line utility for running pipeline recipes is also available. It may be embedded by users at their home institute into data reduction scripts for the automation of processing tasks.
Both Gasgano and Esorex are included in the pipeline public release packages.
Pipeline Releases Based on the most Recent CPL Release
The Pipeline Systems Department makes also these data reduction pipelines available to the user community. The table below provides access to the pipelines currently available.
Latest Releases:November 03, 2009: UVES pipeline 4.4.8 supporting new red CCD (and old) data reduction
September 02, 2009: GIRAFFE pipeline 2.8.1 installation problem fixed
September 01, 2009: New FORS Pipeline Manual (3.1) related to release 4.6.3
August 04, 2009: Release of the GIRAFFE pipeline 2.8.1
August 01, 2009: Release of the CRIRES pipeline 1.11.0
July 30, 2009: Release of the SINFONI pipeline 2.0.5
July 22, 2009: Release of the AMBER pipeline 2.5.2
July 7, 2009: Release of the VIMOS pipeline 2.2.3
July 7, 2009: Release of the ISAAC pipeline 5.10.2
July 6, 2009: Release of the SOFI pipeline 1.5.2
July 3, 2009: Release of the VISIR pipeline 3.2.2
July 3, 2009: Release of the NACO pipeline 4.1.2
July 3, 2009: Release of the FORS pipeline 4.6.3
June 2, 2009: Release of the GIRAFFE pipeline 2.8
Installation of Multiple Pipelines
The procedure for a simultaneous installation of multiple pipelines on a single account is:- Download the desired pipeline kits from the "Release File" column in the table below into an empty, temporary directory.
- Download the Pipeline-kit installer into the same directory.
- If necessary, make it executable:
chmod u+x install_pipelinekit - Execute the command:
./install_pipelinekit *-kit-*.* - After the installation the temporary directory with its contents can be deleted.
The below pipelines are delivered with CPL 5.0.1, gasgano 2.3.0 and esorex 3.7.2, they can be installed together using the above procedure.
Previous Pipeline Releases
The Pipeline Systems Department also makes these data reduction pipelines available to the user community. They are based on older versions of CPL and can in general not be installed together.
| Pipeline With links to the instrument pages |
Release Information | Release File Includes CPL,Gasgano,EsoRex, and static calibration data |
Users Manual and Documentation | Data Sets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HAWK-I | 1.4.2 (2008-11-27) | 1.4.2 (2008-11-27) | 1.4.2 (2008-11-27) | |
| UVES (DISCLAIMER) | 2.9.7 (2007-10-12) | 2.9.7 (MIDAS based) |
UVES Pipeline User Manual 2.9.7
FLAMES-UVES Pipeline User Manual 2.9.7 |
A set of reference and master calibration data is included in the pipeline package. |
UVES RED arm data reduction after UVES MIT CCD upgrade, done on 6-14 July 2009, is not supported by current MIDAS based UVES pipeline release due to change of orientation of the CCD.
Publications and Links
VLT Science Products Produced by Pipelines, 2004, D.R. Silva & M. Peron, ESO Messenger 118.The ESO Quality Control Group processes VLT data and monitors the instrument and data quality and also provides a summary of current pipeline status.