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Diffs from version 3.4 to 3.6 |
People used to the previous distributions will find a new directory structure. The whole source code tree has been moved one directory below, in a directory called src/. From the eclipse root directory, you see now:
eclipse/bin executables
eclipse/doc Postscript documentation
eclipse/man Unix man pages for all commands
eclipse/src Source code tree
This means that once you have made the binaries, you can safely delete the source code tree if you want to gain disk space. In a near future, it is planned to distribute eclipse also as an RPM archive for Linux installs, and only bin, man, and doc would be distributed.
These files are always updated for new distributions. Substantial changes have been brought, please read these files!
The default eclipse-rc file delivered with the distribution contains default values for the VLT UT1 pipeline machine. It is likely to be largely oversized for your own machine. Modify it accordingly.
Lots of bugs on the HPUX platforms, due to errors in the OS itself. Some header files reference themselves in a recursive way, the 'make' command is not able to call itself and carry over environment variables, etc. Some handcrafting has been necessary to bring eclipse to a smooth compilation on HPUX, especially on version 9.X and older.
Some bugs in internal Solaris librairies, have been compensated for in the eclipse code. Workarounds have been installed.
If you want to launch eclipse recipes at night but want to know exactly what happened when you come back in the morning, there is now support for a logging mechanism. Just set the E_LOGFILE environment variable to a valid filename (including path), and all messages coming from eclipse recipes will be appended to this file. Notice that messages will not be produced if you shut down the verbose mode, i.e. to observe something in the log file you need to setenv E_VERBOSE. One convenient feature is that the command-line you used to launch the command is printed out into this log file, which helps trace errors.
The following features have been implemented related to ISAAC support:
The linear regression algorithm has been replaced by a robust linear estimator, getting rid of any sky signal present in the twilight frames. As a result, processing time is now much longer, but still acceptable for processing of 10-15 frames. Obtained twilight flats have now much greater quality as the previous version.
The output of this procedure is now a regular PAF file, conforming to ESO standards, instead of an ASCII file.
The std command, which holds a database of standard infrared stars, has now an option to read an external database file. Beware though, that the file you provide must be exactly formatted as expected by std. Provision is kept to add later on support for other formats.
The is_zerop command (zero-points for ISAAC imaging) also supports this external database loading.
Some changes have been brought to the ini file. You will need to re-generate new ini files! Flatfield, dark and bad pixel map are now all declared in the same section (see jitter.ini for more info).
Sky filtering can now only be done by a running filter. The time variation method proved unefficient on ISAAC/SOFI data and as greedy in resources, so it was completely removed from the code.
If automatic object detection is giving weird results, or does not choose the right objects (e.g. you have a moving object in the field but want to center your frames on non-moving objects), you can provide your own list of objects through an ASCII file. See the sections: [ObjectAcquisition] and [UserObjects].
All intermediate outputs are now deactivated as a default. If you want to produce intermediate result files, you need to request them by setting the correct values in the ini file.
There is now one supplementary result file, produced by activating the variable: [PostProcessing]:ProduceStatusReport. This result file looks like an ini file, it contains all information used by the algorithm to work through your data. It contains every piece of information that was gathered at each level during the process. What's best: since this file is produced in an ini format, it can be reused as a jitter.ini file for further re-processings.
This recipe is not documented yet. It is associated to the ARCS template from ISAAC, to compute the detector distortions and wavelength calibration from an image of calibration lamps. Hard to use without documentation for the moment... will be updated later.
This recipe can be used to combine spectra issued from the NodOnSlit template from ISAAC. It does not do much more than frame recombination, though, and does not take into account calibration frames you might have. This command has been superseded by spjitter, which does much more than only frame combination.
This recipe extracts a spectrum from a combined image, along a trace produced from the StarTrace template. It does not need the image to have been corrected from distortion, but works the other way around: you provide a combined (but distorted) image, a measure of the distortion obtained from StarTrace, and where the spectrum is expected. You get in output an extracted spectrum along the trace. This command has been superseded by spjitter, which does distortion correction, after which extracting a spectrum is just a matter of extracting a line (or a group of lines) from the combined image.
This recipe is associated to the spectroscopic flat-field template from ISAAC. It is used to create a spectroscopic flat-field.
This recipe is associated to the SlitPosition template from ISAAC. It is used to detect accurately the position of the slit in the instrument. Its use is mainly intended for the instrument scientist, to check the slit position at the beginning of each night.
This recipe is associated to the StarTrace template from ISAAC. It is meant to study the distortion of the detector along spectra, by acquiring a bright star on different slit positions, for various positions on the detector. The output of this recipe is a table describing the distortion along the spectral direction. It is used by the spjitter recipe.
This recipe is not associated to any specific ISAAC template. It performs wavelength calibration by correlating bright OH lines found in the input image, with a catalog. It can be used to calibrate accurately raw frames produced by the NodOnSlit template, if they show strong OH lines. It produces in output a linear dispersion relation, associating pixel position and wavelength.
This recipe is associated to the spectroscopic NodOnSlit template. It covers both bi-position and jitter observing procedures. This is the command of choice for spectral reductions, since it performs frame combination, distortion correction (along star traces and along arcs), accurate sky subtraction, and wavelength calibration. In output, you get a rectified, combined image, with informations about the wavelength calibration. From that, extracting a spectrum is just a matter of extracting a line or group of lines.
spjitter is meant to be to spectroscopy what jitter is for imaging: a complete procedure offering corrections for everything that can be calibrated and corrected. The output of this procedure should be the basis for further data analysis by the astronomer. The command is also set by an ini file, containing references to calibration data or values whenever available. Emphasis has been put on the ease of use, documentation (still not released at the moment), and speed performance.
Bugs corrected in dfits and fitsort. It did not change the programs output, but lead to coredumps in some special (weird!) cases.
New general command: findobjs, supersedes peaks, detpeak, fwhm, and photfits. This new command can do all what the others did. The algorithm for object localization is also more robust, it is less likely to overflow the stack with this new method.