Calar Alto Utilities

Calar Alto Utilities

Index:

1. fitslist

This utility allows creating listings of the fits files. The listings are created acordingly to certains keywords from the fits headers, depending on the instrument. You must select the instrument and the keywords are read automatically. As well you can create your own keywords file, if you prefer having a different information on the listing. See below for the key file format.

If run from Solaris environment, this program works together with the registry. When a new astronomer comes to Calar Alto, as soon as he enters into the instrumentation machine, is invited to fill a form. This is our Observers Registry, that can be consulted with regView program. That information introduced on the form, will be used as the header for the listing. Of course, you must be registered previouly. If not, the header will be empty. There is another important thing for having the registry information on the header: you must start fitslist from a directory under the normal structure on the instrumentation machines. That means you must be somewhere under /disk-n/obs35_images on the ultra1 (3.5) or /disk-n/obs22_images on the ultra3 (2.2) or /disk-n/obs12_images on the ultra2 (1.23).

If run from Linux environment, it will run independently from the registry.

The possibilities of the program allow you to create a file with the listing, print it, only print the list or only displaying the list on screen.

On Solaris, this program can be called as flist.

Creating your own key files. Key file format:

If you want to have your own key file, you must select the option "User Defined" and create your key file. It must have a special sintax. You must write one key and its format per line, as:

KEY FORMAT

Where ' KEY ' is one valid key on the fits header (you must write the complete key name) and 'FORMAT ' is a valid format for the value that the key holds. Separator from KEY and FORMAT must be the space key. It is important as it CANNOT be the TAB key. The last line of the file MUST BE a line with a valid format. It CANNOT BE a blank line. No blank lines between format lines are allowed. The format is always a word starting with % and followed by a C like format:

%ns or %nc : They are used for the same: a string field where n is the length of the string. If n is not given, the default is a 10 characters string.

%d or %nd : where n is a decimal number, it is used for a decimal field with n digits (Example: %4d will be a four digit field)

%n.mf : This is a float field of n digit (including the decimal point) where the decimal part is m digits. As a example, a field like 999.99999 will be %9.5f

Examples of real KEYS can be:

INSTRUME %s

OBJECT %15s

BITPIX %4d

DARKTIME %5.1f

AIRMASS %8.6f

HIERARCH CAHA DET CCD1 NAME %c

Remember, one KEY (and its format) per line and NO blanks lines in the file.

2. datout

This command will extract fits files from a DAT tape and will copy them into disk.

Syntax:

datout datNo from total [prefix]

datNo	Mandatory. This is the DAT device number. So for /dev/rmt/0 this parameter must be 0
from	Mandatory. This is the first file to start with. First file on tape is always 1
total	Mandatory. How many files we want to be copied on disk. If we want the whole tape, we can put a big number here (say 100000). At the End Of Tape, the program will stop automatically.
prefix	Optional. Files copied into disk are named as 00001.fits, 00002.fits, 00003.fits... and so on. If you specify this parameter, the prefix will be added to the number, with the _ character. So, if you specify this parameter to be "pepe", the files will be called pepe_00001.fits, pepe_00002.fits... and so on.

This command is thought to be run in background without user intervention. The problem can appear if when extracting a file, there is on disk a file with the same name. To avoid user manipulation, the program will add the extension ".fits" to the file being extracted, as many times as needed. For example: Imagine you have entered this command for extracting 4 files starting on number 2 from /dev/rmt/1 with prefix mar:

datout 1 2 4 mar &

1 is the dat drive (/dev/rmt/1), 2 is the first file to be extracted, 4 is the number of files to be extracted and "mar" is the prefix.

So this command will extract files and will call them:

mar_00002.fits mar, mar00003_.fits, mar00004_.fits and mar_00005.fits

if, after finished we give the same command again, there will be a name conflict as the files exist on disk. So the program will automatically rename the files being extracted to:

mar_00002.fits.fits, mar_00003.fits.fits, mar_00004.fits.fits and mar_00005.fits.fits

So the original mar_00002.fits, mar_00003.fits, etc, are not overwriten. Again, if we give the same command again, the program will add another ".fits" extension to the files being extracted, so we will have the new extracted files as:

mar_00002.fits.fits.fits

and so on.

If you do not give any argument, a little help will be shown.

3. ffl

Flat Field Lamps. This software controls the Flat Field Lamps on the Dome. At the present you have it for 3.5m and 2.2m Telescopes. The syntax is:

ffl

without any argument. You can control 5 lamps. The last one (lamp 5) has different intensities, so this lamp is ON you can change intensity through radiobuttons.

Every program action is shown on the same x-terminal from where the aplication was launched. A message is composed by these fields:

<action> : <action_status> : <message>

Where:

<action> is a string informing about the last action executed by the user

<action_status> can be 'OK', 'ERROR', 'WARNING' or 'INFO' . It will inform you how the action finishes. The first three messages are telling you if any error is present. The last one ('INFO') is used together with the 'Status' button at the GUI for giving you more info (text info) about the lamp controller answer. If you ask for status, you'll be given a string such:

0 - 1 - 0 - 0 - 1 - 7

The first five digits are informing you about the 5 lamps status (0 for OFF and 1 for ON). The last one is telling you in which intensity is lamp 5. If you want to know the power, you must add 1 to that info. So on the example, you have lamps 2 and 5 to ON and that one with intensity of 8 watts. Of course on the GUI you have a graphical information, but that text string can be useful for testing purposes (just to see if what you get on the GUI is what you have on the lamps)

<message> The last field is giving you a short description of the action.

4. flats

This commands performs similar actions like the above one (ffl ), but running as a text program that can be added into scripts.

Syntax:

flats [ ALLOFF] || [ L <x> ON || OFF [i] ]

Where:

x is the number of the lamp (from 1 to 5)

i is the intensity (0-9) for lamp 5

When lamp 5 is set to ON, you MUST select an intensity from 0 to 9.

Arguments are not case sensitive, except for ALLOFF which must be upper case

Without arguments, you'll see a short description.

Calar Alto Utilities

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