Processing and Distribution of the Pre-imaging Data
Pre-imaging data are science data taken prior to
execution of a regular Service Mode program. Their goal is to allow the PI
to prepare details of follow-up observations, e.g. prepare accurate co-ordinates for follow-up
spectroscopic observations. These data are time-critical. Therefore a special process has been
implemented to rapidly process and distribute these data after they have been acquired. The
processing is done by QC Garching in an automated procedure.
Currently, pre-imaging is supported for FORS2 and VISIR.
Handling of the pre-imaging data includes the following steps:
Anytime the science pre-imaging data are obtained at Paranal they
are identified by the "PRE" string in the DPR.TECH keyword of the
header.
The data are immediately transferred from Paranal to the ESO Archive
in Garching.
Once a day, at 14:00 local Garching time, a cronjob is
executed. It finds any new pre-imaging data and retrieves them from
the Archive.
The pre-imaging data are loaded to a processing
system of the QC group. There, they are associated with
static calibrations and are processed by the pipeline. Pipeline
products are renamed following each instrument renaming
scheme:
FORS2,
and
VISIR.
The list of static calibrations is maintained by the Quality Control
scientist of the respective instrument.
Products of successfully processed data, logs, all the raw frames,
as well as listings are then retrieved by the ESO Archive and are sent
to an ftp site ready to be picked by the PI.
A notification is sent to the PI with instructions how to retrieve the data.
Please keep in mind that the data products distributed in the
pre-imaging packages are not verified for their quality and are not
intended for accurate scientific measurements.