CIRSI Data Reduction Software(CIRDR)
Version 0.0.3 (Chan, McMahon and Hoenig)

CIRDR and IRAF

CIRDR is a data reduction package written under IRAF environment, for reducing data obtained with the Cambridge Infra Red Survey Instrument (CIRSI Camera).

The following is some useful background information about IRAF:

• A Beginner' Guide to Using IRAF Version [ps file] (Jeannette Barnes) : A good IRAF manual for IRAF users, not just only for beginners.
• Introduction to IRAF (S. J. Chan): These WWW pages are based on a five-day (15 hours) intensive IRAF course including computer practice.

Introduction

There are three sub-packages within CIRDR: CQLOOK, CPLINE, CIRUTIL and additional sub-package CIRCONTRIB, which is based on software we have imported from elsewhere. .

CQLOOK

CQLOOK is a package for 'quickly' producing rough sky subtracted images from sets of dithered observations during an observing run. Typical infrared observations are dominated by strong time and spatially variable background signal from the night sky. The dominance of the variable sky background in infrared data and the fact that usually the objects of interest are at flux levels where the fractional uncertainty in the sky background due to poisson counting errors and and interpixel flat fielding, requires dithering of many short exposures and the recombination of the images with careful sky subtraction to produce deep images. The primary high level tasks for reducing NDR and RRR data are CNDRPROC and CRRRPROC respectively. Most users should only need to use these tasks.

CPLINE

CPLINE is a package for producing 2nd-pass/final-version sky subtracted images from sets of dithered observations.

CIRUTIL

CIRUTIL is a general utility sub-package. For example, CIRUTIL contains tasks for displaying all 4 chips simultaneiously, displaying difference images and obtaining information from the FITs headers.

CIRCONTRIB

CIRCONTRIB is a general contribution package which contains tasks contributed by other sites and users.

Getting Started

• Run IRAF on Solaris-computers in the IoA site.
  1. if you have "loginuser.cl" in your iraf home directory (home$), rename your own loginuser.cl into myloginuser.cl

  2. copy a file called "loginuser" in /home/cirsi/ircsoft/cirdr/ to your iraf home directory.

     cp   /home/cirsi/ircsoft/cirdr/loginuser    user_iraf_home_dir/loginuser.cl
     

     ## remember to put back ".cl" at the end of the file

  3. An external (non-IRAF) programe, which is for "stripe noise correction", is installed as a foreign task under IRAF environment. Users must put the following lines in their .tschrc (NOT .mytschrc) file.

     # define path for CIRDR foreign commands
     if ( -e /home/cirsi/cirdr_setup) then
     source /home/cirsi/cirdr_setup
     else
     echo 'Warning: cirdr_setup is missing'
     endif
     

  4. type "cl" to login iraf

  5. cl> # type cirdr to load the Cambridge Infraed Data Reduction Facility
     cl>cirdr

  6. cq> # type "help cirdr" if necessary
     cq> # type "help subpackage_name" if necessary
     cq> help cqlook

     cq> cnews      ## read the current CIRDR newsletter

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  Currently maintained by Richard G. McMahon <rgm@ast.cam.ac.uk> and Michael Hoenig <mhoenig@ast.cam.ac.uk>
  Last modified: Sat Nov 28 19:29:45 1998