FLAMINGOS at the MMT FLAMINGOS at the MMT A User's Guide Michael Ledlow Joanna Levine Nick Raines Katherine Wu Version 1.0; 2003 February Contents: I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. Overview Getting Started Imaging with FLAMINGOS Taking Spectra with FLAMINGOS Shutting Down Troubleshooting Contacts Appendices: A1.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT I. FLAMINGOS+MMT Overview FLAMINGOS is the FLoridA Multi-object Imaging Near-ir Grism Observational Spectrometer. This manual attempts to provide the user with a good portion of the tools needed to successfully take data with FLAMINGOS at the MMT. A knowledge of basic unix commands is assumed. FLAMINGOS is comprised of 2 cryogenic dewars.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT Resolving Powers for 3 pixel slit: Filter Combination Band R JH-bandpass + JH-grism J 960 H 1250 H 650 K 865 HK-bandpass + HK-grism Mos Plates: 11 positions are available for Mos plates; at present 1 position is occupied by a Mos-plate shapped single long slit with width of 3 pixels.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT the script. Then run ufstop.pl -clean -stop, and start over. Never type Ctrl-C before the exposure time counter has begun.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT II. Getting Started.... ...at the beginning of your run (or in case of crashes): When you arrive at the telescope, you will have to bring up the FLAMINGOS windows and initialize the system. This is a procedure that will hopefully only need to be done once at the beginning of your run, however, you may need to repeat this process during the course of your observing time if the system crashes. Taking it from the top, the startup procedure is as follows: 1.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT temperature should never vary by more than ~0.5 K and the MOS dewar temperature must remain below 200.0 for sucessful imaging. If you are taking spectra, the Mos dewar must be at ~83 K. Mechanisms inside of the Mos dewar should not be moved for about 4 hours from the time it is first cooled down from room temperature. Record Temps window - This window logs all five temperatures every 10 minutes. It is sometimes easier to monitor the array and MOS dewar temperatures from here.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT II. Getting Started.... ...at the beginning of each night: Unless some of the daemons have crashed or hung, it is not necessary to run mmt.initflam.pl every night. The following is a list of things you do need to do prior to each night's observing: 1. Fill Both Dewars. The telescope operator should be in charge of filling the dewars with liquid nitrogen. Although the telescope operator is in charge of this at the MMT, guest observers do this at the KPNO 2.1-m.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT command and check the usage of /export/home0/; if it is getting full, start taping! 4. Set up header information, data location, file names: Once you have created a data directory, you need to tell the computer where it is. mmtguest@flam-4m-1b{17} config.exposure.pl The script will then prompt you for the desired information. Make sure you change the date, data directory, and file name! Weather info is usually a good thing as well.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT III. Imaging with FLAMINGOS FLAMINGOS is set up so that all data taking is run from the command line of flamingos1b using a set of perl scripts1. In the following sections, the scripts useful for taking imaging data are discussed. A. Wheel set-up for Imaging: FLAMINGOS has five wheels in its optical path, each containing various filters, pupil masks, and spectroscopic slits.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT DATE_OBS - UT date at the end of the night (YYYY-MM-DD) EXP_TIME - Exposure time for integration. Must be an integer >= 3 seconds. NREADS - Number of non-destructive reads per endpoint (currently must equal 1) WEATHER WIND - Sky conditions (1=photometric, 2=thin cirrus, 3=broken clouds, 4=overcast, 5=snowing, 6=fog). - Wind conditions (1=calm, 2=low, 3=moderate, 4=high, 5=closed). In addition, after prompting you for all of these parameters, config.exposure.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT E. Offsetting the Telescope from Flamingos1b At certain times (such as pointing checks or adjusting the position of your sources on the detector) you may wish to offset the telscope directly from flamingos1b rather than having your operator do it. In this case, the following commands may prove to be useful: absolute.offset.mmt.pl - Allows manual absolute offsets (e.g., an fixed offset with respect to the present target's catalog cordinates) of the telscope by the observer.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT IV. Taking Spectra with FLAMINGOS Flamingos may be used for obtaining long slit or multi-object slit spectra; please see the overview section for resolving powers within selected passbands. This section sketches out the sequence of commands required to align a long slit or mos plate, and describes some of the calibration data typically taken. The following list of commands is used for alignment of both long slits and mos plates: On the flamingos command line: config.exposure.pl config.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT B. Mosplate Alignment 1. Load the mask design image and region file into buffer 3 of ds9. Flip and rotate until the image's WCS matches that of a raw Flamingos frame. Turn on tiling, with a vertical orientation. 2. Acquire target on Flamingos and attempt to visually pick out the alignment targets (stars or galaxies). If necessary, adjust telescope pointing with relative.offset.mmt.pl until the targets are within the central region of the array.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT C. Calibrations There are two types of calibrations required for long slit and mos spectra: wavelength calibration and flat fields. These measurements need to be made after the instrument is fully configured, and before you change the configuration (do not move any wheels until you've taken these data!).
FLAMINGOS at the MMT V. Shutting Down at the End of the Night At the end of a long and productive (we hope!) night of observing, there is a small sequence of things that need to be done. In order, they are: 1. Move the wheels to their resting positions - Using the scripts config.mos.wheel.pl and config.filter.grism.decker.wheels.pl send the MOS wheel to imaging, the decker wheel to imaging, the filter wheel to J, and the grism wheel to true_dark. 2.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT VI.Troubleshooting 1) Problem: The image looks funny. You can see all 32 amplifiers, and the signal level is ~58,000 ADU. Solution: This is a hardware problem related to electrical noise causing an early readout of the detector. In imaging mode, MCE4 reads the array once, and then lets it integrate before reading it again. The final image written to disk is the difference of these two images.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT /usr/local/flamingos/flamingos.hea ders.lut/Flamingos.fitsheader -file /data0/mmtguest/Test/test -index 2" If it hangs here for more than ~6 seconds, type ufdc -q status in another flmn-2m-1b window ufdc> greeting: UFGemMCE4Agent -- accepted client: ufdc@flmn-2m-1b@2002: 350:03:40:49.170980 2002:350:03:40:49.170980 2002:350:03:40:50.440745ufdc@flmn-2m-1b START GATIR *Flamingos Beta* 2.00_f.07 >> >>>>>.....TAKING AN IMAGE OR APPLYING LUT.....
FLAMINGOS at the MMT (Now it counts down for 10 seconds before applying the power). ..RPC-3>logout Now run initflam.pl at the flamingos1b prompt. You do not need to close any of the daemons to rerun initflam.pl for this problem. At the start initflam.pl will complain that the motor and mce4 daemons are not up and listening, and ask if you want to continue. You do want to continue, as the daemons were working properly before the crash of MCE4.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT reboot it. To do this telnet baytech, userid iocompow (note there's only one m in this userid) password 16Mb,img. At the prompt type reboot 1, and then type logout when the prompt returns (e.g., see the example output in 3a, above). Now you must close all three daemons (Temperature, Motor, and MCE4) and the record_temperatures window and run initflam.pl. 4) Problems when running config.filter.grism.decker.wheels.pl or config.mos.wheel.pl.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT VII.Contacts Nick Raines, University of Florida, Flamingos support scientist office 352-392-2052, ext. 244 home: 352-381-9069 raines@astro.ufl.edu Richard Elston, University of Florida, Flamingos PI office: 352-392-2052 elston@astro.ufl.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT Appendix 1: FLAMINGOS Command Listing and Partial Description of Function A. Basic Instrument Configuration Commands config.exposure.pl config.filter.grism.decker.wheels.pl config.mos.wheel.pl initflam.pl set.bias.pl set.exposuretime.pl set.filename.pl Sets object, filebase, orig_dir, exp_time. Starts daemons, and setup MCE4 (array controller). Imaging use bias = 1.0 V; Spectroscopy use bias = 0.75 V. Exposure time is in integer seconds; 3 seconds is the shortest.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT G. Data Taping 1) Packrat's dds4 tape drive is /dev/rmt/0cn. Here are some common taping commands: flamingos flamingos flamingos flamingos flamingos packrat packrat packrat packrat packrat 28> 29> 30> 31> 32> mt -f /dev/rmt/0cn status mt -f /dev/rmt/0cn fsf # mt -f /dev/rmt/0cn rewind mt -f /dev/rmt/0cn offline tar -cvf /dev/rmt/0cn *.fits H. Data Transfer To use a tape device on either packrat you must transfer it from flamingos1b first.
FLAMINGOS at the MMT tweak.mos.pl ufidle.pl ufstop.pl -clean -stop Allows adjustments to the mos wheel position. Sets MCE4 in continuous resetting mode on the array. Sets various semaphores in /var/tmp/ Stops the present integration.
