Quality Control and
Data Processing

The QC group processes a stream of science-grade data products for selected VLT instruments. They are created using certified pipelines and certified master calibrations. Find an overview of the current streams here.

The PIONIER pipeline which is used by Quality Control is not available to the community.
It is used to assess the quality of the observations, and to monitor the health of the PIONIER instrument on short and longer time scales.

Calibration Raw Data

The following table contains an overview of the raw calibration files for PIONIER. The data types are identified with the DPR TYPE keyword of the fits headers.

frame	DPR TYPE	DPR TECH	Purpose	number taken at night	details
DETMON	PTC,BIAS,DETCHAR	IMAGE	detector monitoring (gain, bad pixels map)	50
DARK	DARK	IMAGE	dark current	3
SPECTRAL_CALIBRATION (OBJECT)	WAVE,OBJECT	INTERFEROMETRY	effective WL of each spectroscopic channel	1
SPECTRAL_CALIBRATION (LAMP)	WAVE,LAMP	INTERFEROMETRY	effective WL of each spectroscopic channel	1
KAPPA_MATRIX (OBJECT)	KAPPA,OBJECT	INTERFEROMETRY	interferometric transmission	4
KAPPA_MATRIX (LAMP)	KAPPA,LAMP	INTERFEROMETRY	interferometric transmission	4
FRINGE CALIBRATOR	FRINGE,OBJECT	INTERFEROMETRY	fringes on a calibrator	1

The DETMON is used only to monitor the detector (Gain and bad pixels). The full detector is lluminated.
SPECTRAL_CALIBRATION, DARK and KAPPA_MATRIX are taken at night on the object (for spectral calibration and kappa matrix) for calibration of the science or astronomical calibrator data. They are also taken during the day on an internal source to monitor the stability and the Health of the instrument.
An astronomical calibrator is obesverd also at night following a sequence : CAL1-SCI-CAL2. Most of the astronomical calibrators have known diameters and magnitude which are listed in the calibrator catalog (see here for more information on the catalog).

Calibration cascade

The processing of PIONIER calibration frames requires a cascaded scheme where the mutual dependencies of products and raw frames are respected. The proper sequence of all these production steps is called the calibration cascade.
The proper sequence of all these production steps is called the calibration cascade (see here ).
Within that cascade, all products are checked with respect to their quality and their relationship in time. This means e.g. that a dispersion solution is not only generated using an arbitrary quality-checked localization solution, but that specific solution is chosen which is closest in time.
All products created by QC Garching follow the calibration cascade.

Static calibrations

The following static calibration tables (the ones not being regularly processed from raw calibration data) are required for PIONIER data processing: