1. Starting the system
2. LIRIS real time display (RTD)
3. LIRIS mechanisms
4. Focusing
5. LIRIS observing commands
6. End of night
7. Copying data
8. Important notes
    

1. Starting the system

When you arrive at the telescope the system and the requested instrument will already be setup for you. The software should be running, too. If not, ask your telescope operator (OSA) or support astronomer (SA) to do it for you. In the very unlikely case that the system is down and you have to bring it up yourself,

• Log on to the Sun workstation taurus (next to the ICL computer):
  LOGIN: whtobs
  PASSWORD: provided by the OSA or the SA
   An xterm orange window will appear, with multiple tabbed menues. Swith to the tab menu that corresponding to the DAS (Data Acquisition System) which controls LIRIS (get its name from the white board above the ICL computer). It is entitled DAS??.
   
• Start the Data Acquisition System:
  • Type obssys in the DAS (orange) window. It defines the software to use and will then prompt you to select the observing system. Type number "1" for manual instrument selection and select LIRIS and wait until the prompt DAS> appears.
  • To start the software, type
    DAS> startobssys
    Wait for the prompt and minimise this window (it is not needed until you shut down the system).
     
• Start the system computer:
  • Type obssys in the pink window.
  • Enter the same option number as in the orange DAS window and wait to get the prompt SYS>.
  • Type SYS> startobssys
    This initializes the telescope control software (TCS) link as well as the LIRIS controllers, and brings up several new windows:
    • A real time display (RTD) control tool
      
    • An Ximtool to display the data
      
    • The LIRIS mechanism mimic.
      
    • An identification window. Enter your name and proposal identification.
      
    • The observing log.
      The log is automatically updated each time a new file is written to disk. To comment a file click once with the mouse on the file and a box appears where you can type shorts comments.
      
    • The array info display window
      
    • The talker window. It displays messages from the observing system to the user.
       
• If you want, you can bring up a telescope info display window:
  SYS> tcsinfo&
   
• To examine LIRIS data:
  
  • Login at whtdrpc1, to your right side when sitting in front of the instrument control:
    LOGIN: whtguest
    PASSWORD: provided by your support astronomer.
  • Open an xgterm:
    xgterm -sb&
  • Open an Ximtool:
    ximtool&
  • Copy the data of interest into /scratch/whta/<somedirectory>
  • cd /home/whtguest/liris/iraf/
  • Start IRAF:
    cl
  • Change to the disk and directory where the data is going to be stored, e.g.
    cl> cd /scratch/whta/<somedirecory>
  • Start the LIRIS quick look reduction package
    cl> liris_ql
     
• IMPORTANT: the readout noise value given in the image FITS headers is fixed, and regularly updated, but not derived from each specific image. Observers are therefore recommended to check the readout noise of their images.

Next: 2. LIRIS real time display (RTD)