IPHAS - Observing Manual
- Opening up
See the WFC observing manual
- Evening twilight sky flats
- Focusing
Once the correct focus position is found (the nominal focus is 43.95) then
change the value used by the focus command in the
/home/intobs/ha_survey/filter_wrap.csh
script to the focus value used for the night.
- Standard star observations
These are only necessary if the night is photometric. There is no point
observing standards through clouds. However, if in doubt, take them as it
does not hurt.
Standard star exposures in the evening are taken in twilight when the sky
is getting dark and the telescope has been focused.
Try to take 2-3 standard stars in each filter distributed in airmass.
- Survey observations
The fields that should be observed are read from the file fields.todo in the
/home/intobs/ha_survey directory. The already observed fields are listed in
the file fields.done in the same directory.
- Copy the correct fields.todo.??? file to fields.todo
- SYS> /home/intobs/ha_survey/survey_noguide_err.csh --nodebug
- If you want to change the observed sky region, change the fields.todo
file while the Ha or r exposure is being taken or read out.
- To stop the script (after all 3 exposures of a field have been taken),
copy the file empty.dat to fields.todo
To get a real time display of the frames as they are coming in, use the command
iphas_rtd in IRAF on the data reduction computer.
Note: Although the quicklook pipeline is running during the IPHAS survey
nights (eg. to determine the seeing) no data is copied back to the data
reduction computer to reduce the network traffic.
- Standard star observations
These are only necessary if the night is photometric. There is no point
observing standards through clouds. However, if in doubt, take them as it
does not hurt.
Standard star exposures in the morning are taken in twilight when the sky
is starting to get bright and the observing of IPHAS fields has stopped.
Try to take 2-3 standard stars in each filter distributed in airmass.
- Bias
While you wait for morning twilight to come this is a good oportunity to take
some bias frames. Put the Halpha filter in (to prevent light leaking through
the shutter) and take a maximum of 5 bias exposures. If you are in danger of
loosing morning twilight flats then forget about the bias frames - flats are
more important.
- Morning twilight sky flats
- Closing down
See the WFC observing manual