| gnirsinfo (April2005) | gemini.gnirs | gnirsinfo (April2005) |
The GNIRS package contains tasks for processing GNIRS long-slit, cross-dispersed (XD) and integral-field (IFU) spectroscopy data. The tasks are also used to process NIRI and Mid-IR spectroscopy data. The specifics of the individual tasks can be found in their help files. This document describes the common features of the generic tasks and gives a description of the GNIRS data format. More details on data processing for each configuration are available in GNIRSINFOLS (long slit), GNIRSINFOXD (cross-disersed) and GNIRSINFOIFU (integral field unit); and GNIRSEXAMPLES provides sample "recipes" (processing scripts). The file gnirs$data/gnirs-flow.pdf is a summary that you can print out for handy reference.
The tasks produce logfiles of the performed processing steps. The name of the logfile may be set in each individual task, or at the package level by setting gnirs.logfile.
The tasks add header keywords to the output images. These header keywords contain information about the performed processing steps and the values of the critical parameters that were used.
All GNIRS images are written as multi-extension FITS (MEF) files. Raw data have two unnamed extensions. Most of the header information is written to the primary header unit (PHU) which is extension [0]. The data read from the array is in extension [1].
Processing with NSPREPARE (this task is used only for GNIRS data - see below - but other instruments have their own preparation tasks with similar actions) will rename the data extension and, optionally, add variance and data quality extensions. By default (see NSHEADERS) the extension names are SCI for science data, VAR for variance, and DQ for data quality (0 = good). Various header keywords (used later) are added in NSPREPARE.
NSPREPARE will also subtract an offset level (see the NSPREPARE help page for more information), apply a linearity correction if requested (recommended), and add an MDF file (extension MDF) describing which areas of the image contain useful data. It also has a parameter (fl_forcewcs) that will generate the world coordinate system from the RA/Dec and offsets in the header. This is necessary for most data before May 2005 since the WCS in raw GNIRS data was not correct (see output with fl_checkwcs+ to check).
Most data reduction will call NSCUT to extract the regions of interest from the raw data. If more than one region is extracted (e.g., for XD or IFU data) then it is necessary to specify the appropriate extension number. The second extension containing science data, for example, is denoted by [SCI,2].
The task GEMEXTN, when used with default parameters and no arguments, will display all the extensions in a file:
> unlearn gemextn
> gemextn snS20040202S0015
snS20040202S0015[0]
snS20040202S0015[1][MDF]
snS20040202S0015[2][SCI,1]
snS20040202S0015[3][VAR,1]
snS20040202S0015[4][DQ,1]
snS20040202S0015[5][SCI,2]
...
snS20040202S0015[19][DQ,6]
This includes both the index (inside the first []) and the extension name and version (second []). It is only necessary to use one of these, since either uniquely identifies an extension. Name and version are recommended because they specify the type of data contained. There is no guarantee about the ordering of indices apart from extension [0], the PHU, which always contains only header information.
Additional information and ways to handle MEF files can be found in http://www.gemini.edu/sciops/data/dataFormat.html
The task NSHEADERS lists the header parameters used by the various tasks in the GNIRS package (some header values which have values fixed by IRAF or FITS conventions are not included since they cannot be changed).
Before reducing data from an instrument, the user should run
> nsheaders <instrument>
where <instrument> can be gnirs, niri, michelle, or trecs, to ensure
that the appropriate header values are used.
Note that not all header parameters named in NSHEADERS need appear in the raw data. Some are used internally by the GNIRS package. Others are used by NSPREPARE alone - the "prepare" tasks for other instruments (e.g. NPREPARE) might not use them.
NSHEADERS can also be used to change task parameters for an instrument automatically - invoking the task with a particular instrument cause the ".dat" script in gnirs$data for that instrument to be executed.
The task NSSKY, called by NSREDUCE, uses GEMOFFSETLIST to select frames for sky subtraction. The following section gives a general explanation of the process involved and some guidance on handling difficult data; it assumes that the user is calling the tasks via NSREDUCE.
If sky subtraction is required then appropriate sky data are selected for each observation. The sky data are either selected from the list of observations being processed or from nsreduce.skyimages if that is specified. Selection from the observations list is appropriate for dithers along the slit (all images have source and sky); a separate skyimages list is used for "object-sky" dithers (only 1/2 the images have source), and also gives the user more total control when needed.
For a particular observation, the selection of a sky frame from the available data is based on both observation times and pointing. The sky frames must be observed within skyrange seconds of the object (note that the NIRI tasks used minutes, not seconds, here). They must also be observed more than nodsize/2 arcseconds away. If skyrange = INDEF, NSREDUCE attempts to determine the appropriate value so as to select 1 sky frame per object image.
These selection conditions choose sky observations based on physically meaningful conditions. The sky background varies with time, so relatively recent observations should be used, but we must avoid subtracting the science data from itself, so the pointing must be offset.
When planning to reduce some data it's useful to study the observation times:
cl> del phu cl> gemextn n@slist proc="expand" index="0" > phu cl> hselect @phu TIME-OBS,$I yes 11:18:36.7 nN20020630S0259[0] 11:18:55.7 nN20020630S0260[0] 11:19:15.2 nN20020630S0261[0] 11:19:33.7 nN20020630S0262[0] 11:19:52.2 nN20020630S0263[0] 11:20:11.2 nN20020630S0264[0] 11:20:28.2 nN20020630S0265[0] 11:20:47.2 nN20020630S0266[0] 11:21:04.7 nN20020630S0267[0] 11:21:21.2 nN20020630S0268[0] 11:21:38.2 nN20020630S0269[0] 11:22:11.2 nN20020630S0270[0] 11:25:05.7 nN20020630S0271[0] 11:25:24.7 nN20020630S0272[0] 11:25:43.7 nN20020630S0273[0] 11:26:02.7 nN20020630S0274[0] 11:26:19.7 nN20020630S0275[0]
Here a little math (and knowing that the observations are ABAB) suggests that 30 seconds would be a suitable time for selecting most neighbouring images. However, nN20020630S0270 lies between two "groups". There are various ways to handle an observation like this:
Note that you can always select sky frames by hand - provide a list to skyimages, restrict inimages to a single observation, and set skyrange to a very large value. This will force nsreduce to combine all the skyimages data into a single sky.
Abbreviation Explanations
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GNIRS Gemini Near Infra-Red Spectrograph
IFU Integral field unit
MDF Mask defintion file (a binary FITS table)
MEF Multi-extension FITS
XD Cross dispered
PHU Primary header unit (extension [0] of a MEF file)
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Support for variance and data quality handling is somewhat limited. This is partly due to poor support for variance and quality propagation in IRAF tasks. If error handling is required, please read the documentation for individual help tasks carefully and check results.
The tasks in the GNIRS package are designed to operate on MEF FITS images that have been processed using NSPREPARE (for GNIRS data), NPREPARE (NIRI data), MPREPARE (Michelle data), or TPREPARE (T-ReCS data).
gnirsinfols, gnirsinfoxd, gnirsinfoifu, gnirsexamples, nsflat, nsreduce, nsappwave, nswavelength, nstransform, nsextract, nprepare, nsprepare, nssdist, gemlist, mprepare, tprepare.