Quick Guide

Here we describe briefly a sample session with CHAMELEON. We include tips on how to get organized during the data reduction, as this is a time consuming process. We also assume that you are reducing output from CONSTRICTOR. (When re-calibrating data however, you will usually begin by reading the output of CHAMELEON.) After starting $\cal OYST\!ER\,$, type oyster at the IDL prompt. In general, we work our way from the top (FILE) to the bottom (CALIBRATE) in the displayed $\cal OYST\!ER\,$ main widget. Also note that button labels are all caps if they bring up another widget. All other buttons either open another button list (if an arrow is displayed), or immediately execute the associated procedure.

In order to restart CHAMELEON and to continue from where you left it or to get close to this point quickly, it can be important that you have saved flag and calibration tables, and (if applicable) the output file in the previous session. These files are not written automatically, for reasons of greater flexibility. Please also note that tables loaded are not automatically applied. Look at the tables as logs, containing information on flags and calibration entries. If you want to load point data and apply flags from a previous session, or want to undo specific actions on the scan data, these tables are useful. In order for them to be up-to-date, you should load any existing table before you do additional editing or calibration. If you want to start over with, e.g. the calibration, then you should also start a new calibration table by clearing any loaded table with UNDORESET in the calibration widget, which also initializes the calibrated data (for the selected variable) to be equal to the uncalibrated data.