SOFI Specific Tools and Tips

• ESO Exposure Time Calculator
• Useful Exposure times
• VERY USEFUL Data Reduction page (tools, calibration repository, etc.)
• La Silla Automatic Report Facility is a tool for monitoring various data quality control parameters (go to "QC Reports" and select an instrument or if you feel adventureous go to "Dynamic Reports"). The reported results are based on the on-line pipeline, so they are not science grade.
• Gasgano configuration for SofI: the Gasgano param file is under configuration control (so it can not be modified by the user) to avoid frequent changes and to keep the SofI pipeline recipes available. However, the preferences for displaying keyords are optimized for both SofI and EFOSC2, so some useful keywords from the headers fo the SofI files are not displayed by default. The visitors can add extra keywords from the pul-down menu: File => Prefences. Then, go to the "File Display & Grouping" tab, click on the "Insert Row" button and type in the window, using the keywords that are already present as an example. Useful additions are: INS.MODE, DET.DIT, DET.NDIT, INS.OPTI1.NAME, INS.FILT1.NAME, INS.FILT2.NAME, TEL.AIRM.START
• STDSOP - tool for selecting telluric calibrators, and for generating telluric standard OBs directly on the SofI instrument workstation; very useful for selecting telluric stars at matching airmass but the users are strongly adviced to prepare their own OBs for the tellurics with the selected stars, to maintain consistent program IDs.

Generic Tools and information

• Observing Tools and Services
• ESO lists of IR standard stars
• Interactive 2MASS All-sky Image Service (great for finding charts)
• Telluric (spectroscopic) Standards (information, lists, prinicples of selection, etc. from the ISAAC web page; note the magnitude limits are unappropriate for SofI!)
• Hipparcos Telluric standard finder
• Neon Xenon lines
• Xenon Argon lines
• OH Sky lines
• ESO Filter System
• To run IRAF on astro@wg5off: typing "cl" in a terminal will execute an alias, that will take one to /home/astro/iraf, launch an xgterm with a sidebar from there, and start IRAF within that xgterm. The login.cl file in /home/astro/iraf can be edited but if the visitors want to avoid this, they can type "\cl" and launch IRAF from wherever they want. Of course, it is better to do this from within a xgterm (which can be staretd with "xgterm -sb &").
• SuperMongo config file - it is often editted by users, this is a ground-base version; if you have a problem, overwrite with it the current config file /home/astro/.sm