User`s guide

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 scripts

. 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. In imaging mode the following configuration should be in place:

Decker Wheel (motor a) should be set to imaging

MOS Wheel (motor b) should be set to imaging

Filter Wheel (motor c) should be set to one of the following bandpass filters: J, H, K, Ks, JH, HK.

Lyot Wheel (motor d) should be set to mmt

Grism Wheel (motor e) should be set to open1

For general purposes, observers can ignore the lyot wheel as it should already have been configured during

engineering time. However, during the first pointing check on a very bright star (V = 2) of the evening, it is

advisable to take an image of the star way out of focus, to verify that the stop has not moved, and that the mirror

covers and dome are open and positioned properly. You should see a bright donut, with shadows for the

secondary and the spider vanes.

The remaining wheels positions will need to be adjusted. This is done using the wheel configuration commands:

config.mos.wheel.pl - Allows selection of the MOS wheel position.

config.filter.grism.decker.wheels.pl - Allows selection of the position of the decker,

filter, and grism wheels. Note if you are unsure where the wheels are, you can hit update on the UFSTATUS

GUI and it will tell you.

B. Configuring an Exposure:

In order to set up an exposure, run the config.exposure.pl command. This allows you to set up the

following observing parameters

OBS_TYPE - Type of observation being taken (e.g. object, standard, flat, dark, etc.).

OBJECT - Name of object being observed.

FILEBASE - Prefix of image file. Naming convention is <filebase>.####.fits where the

numbers are automatically incremented by the data taking script.

ORIG_DIR - Absolute pathname of the directory to which you wish to write data.

Make sure you include the trailing / on the pathname.

1 Located in /usr/local/flamingos/, in the directories perl_all_tel/, perl_mmt/,

flamingos.headers.lut/, and flamingos_modules/.

2 If the power to the motor controller has been cycled, the gui will claim that the lyot wheel is at Hartmann1. The lyot

wheel should have been set during the first engineering night of Flamignos' run, and should not need to be adjusted.

3 There are several other parameters that should not be changed: USE_MST = 1 and MSTBREAK = 60.

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