VIRCAM @ VISTA Documentation

VIRCAM / VISTA User Manual

All the information about the instrument itself, its modes and their characteristics as well as detailed information on the acquisition, observation, and calibration templates. Use the latest version. Older versions are kept for historical reasons.

• VISTA User Manual for P90 Phase I
• VISTA User Manual for P89 Phase I and II
• VISTA User Manual for P88 Phase II
• VISTA User Manual for P88 Phase I
• VISTA User Manual for P87 Phase II
• VISTA User Manual for P86 Phase II and P87 Phase I
• VISTA User Manual for P85

The Survey Area Definition Tool - SADT

For the preparation of survey observations with VISTA the use of the Survey Area Definition tool is required to define the survey layout and select suitable guide and active optics stars. The tool and its documentation (cookbook and video tutorial) are available from:

• SADT Cookbook for VIRCAM

The Phase 2 Proposal Preparation Tool - P2PP

The service mode observation for the ESO public survey requires to schedule a large number of observation blocks every year. This requires a p2pp tool which can handle as well complex observing strategies. Therefore new concepts of scheduling containers have been included in P2PP version 3 tool, which has to be used for preparation of Public Surveys observations.

• User Manual for P2PP Version 3

Video tutorials and practical examples how to prepare survey OBs for VISTA can be found on the following page:

• P2PP Tutorials

Related Documents

• "New Observing Concepts for ESO Survey Telescopes" by Bierwirth et al. 2010, SPIE presentation

Last modified: 2012-03-01, vivanov