EFOSC2

ESO Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera

HOME

INDEX

HELP

NEWS

Control Room Facilities

Internet access

Data Analysis

jP2PP and Scheduling Observations

Personal laptop connections

Local printer

Data backup

Note : The appropriate usernames and passwords for the machines used by the observer are displayed on a label stuck to the keyboards of the respective machines

Internet Access

The Linux PC w3p6drl is at the disposal of the observer for accessing the internet, FTPing files from outside ESO, logging on to home acounts, etc.

A copy of each image is also FTPed into this machine. Note that unless saved elsewhere the images from previous days are overwritten each day. A CD writer is now attached to this machine and data may be backed-up on to a CD using this machine. Instructions can be found here.

Data Analysis

The software packages and astronomical databases available on the machines in the control room are in the Scisoft Distribution. Both IRAF and Midas run on the machines.

The Unix workstation w3p6off is the officially maintained offline data reduction machine. This machine includes 2 different display terminals :

1 terminal for data analysis (plus a constantly updated observing log)
1 terminal for displaying EFOSC observation status panels

The Image Files are stored as FITS files in the directory /data/raw/YYYY-MM-DD soon after each observation is completed; the last directory in the path is the date of the beginning of the night. Each Observing mode generates an image with a name which identifies the mode and these names are listed on Templates - A quick reference.

Observers should open a sub-directory (with their name) in either /data/raw/YYYY-MM-DD or /data/work and ensure that the files generated by their analysis are confined to it. Files and directories of unknown provenence will be deleted as and when they are detected to keep the data area uncluttered and available for users and so it is important that useful files are confined to well-named directories whose owners can be traced. The sub-directory with the observer's name will be retained until a day after the end of the run. At the end of the run the observer may store the reduced data on a DAT tape using the drive (/dev/rmt/0mn) attached to the machine or FTP it across to his/her home account.

The workstation w3p6drl is an offline data reduction machine running Linux. The user has more flexibility on this machine and can freely move the imegaes around and manipulate them. The data arrive at the top directory (/scratch/guest/). It is important that at the end of each night the astronomer move the fits files into a subdirectory YYYY-MM-DD, because data files taken on the follow day will have the same names and will therefore overwrite the files from the previous night.

jP2PP and Scheduling the Observing Sequence

The Unix workstation w3p6dhs is used by the observer to run jP2PP and organise the observations. Detailed instructions for running jP2PP for 3.6m/EFOSC2 are available here

Personal Lap-top Connections

Observers can bring their lap-top computers to La Silla and hook them to the internet using the 4 IP connections available in the control room. The IP/DNS/Gateway numbers are displayed on the white board in the control room.

Local Printer

The printer in the control room is lpt3p6. The printer commands from the different machines are :

host	command
w3p6drl	lpr <filename>
w3p6off	lpr -dlpt3p6 <filename>
w3p6dhs	lpr -dlpt3p6 <filename>

Data Backup

Medium	Program	Host	Device	Comments
DAT/DDS-3	dd bs=2880	w3p6ins		automatic backup; only raw data
DAT/DDS-	tar/dd - user's choice	w3p6off	/dev/rmt/0mn	up to the user; raw+analysed data
CD	xcd-roast	w3p6drl		up to the user; raw+analysed data Instructions can be found here

Send comments to : ls-spectro

Last modified: Tue Jan 15 22:58:11 CLST 2002