VLT Instrument Pipelines

Latest News:

Sep 19, 2013: KMOS 1.2.4 has been released.

Sep 09, 2013: UVES 5.2.5 has been released.

May 24, 2013: GIRAFFE 2.11.1 has been released.

May 06, 2013: New releases for all pipelines and Reflex 2.4 are now available.

Jan 07, 2012: Reflex 2.3 has been released together with an update of XSHOOTER, UVES, FORS and VIMOS pipelines and workflows.

Nov 13, 2012: Reflex 2.2 has been released together with a new FORS spectroscopic workflow and an update of the UVES workflow.

Oct 30, 2012: VIMOS kit release that includes 3D cubes WCS support.

Aug 08, 2012: X-Shooter kit release patch to fix 3rd part library installation problems.

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: Reflex, Gasgano and Esorex

Reflex is a new workflow-based data reduction tool that allows easy organization and grouping of the data. It contains interactive elements that provides very quick assesment of the reduction quality. Check this table to know which instruments are supported.

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 Reflex-based workflows

This table shows the pipelines released with a Reflex workflow. Follow these steps to install the software (it includes Reflex itself, the pipelines and demo data sets):

• Check the software prerequisites and installation instructions in the Release Notes of the new Reflex 2.4 workflows
• Download the install_reflex script.
• If necessary, make it executable: chmod u+x install_reflex
• Execute the command and follow the instructions: ./install_reflex

• NOTE 1: Scientifically validated workflows are those that have been confirmed to produce science grade data products. All validated workflows are based on pipelines that have gone through an extensive end-to-end review
• NOTE 2: This column indicates whether there is at least one workflow for that pipeline that includes an interactive component to adjust pipeline parameters

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.

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 6.3, gasgano 2.4.3 and esorex 3.10, 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.

DISCLAIMER:
MIDAS based release is offered with very limited support. We recommend users to use the Reflex based kit release.

Publications, Reference Documents, and Links

VLT-SPE-ESO-19000-1618, Data Flow for VLT/VLTI Instruments Deliverable Specifications (version 3)

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.