CASU WFCAM/VISTA Pipeline Diagrams Page

These are Simon Hodgkin's pipeline diagrams.

WFCAM pipeline diagram JPEG, PNG, PS, EPSI, TIFF and VISIO versions.

WFCAM summit pipeline diagram JPEG, PNG, PS, EPSI and VISIO versions.

Cambridge hardware systems JPEG, PNG, PS, EPSI and VISIO versions.

The elements for each target within an MSB. Each component is an optional iteration of a sequence of observations. Thus at the lowest level, an exposure is made up of a sequence of reads. Exposures can be looped over to build up an integration. Microstepping over integrations for interleaving will increase the size of the data frame by 2x2 or 3x3. Interleaving microsteps also include an integral pixel shift (eg. step n+0.5 pixels) so the data can be combined to create flatfields. This forms a pointing. Dithering around pointings can be used to remove bad pixels. Four pointings can be combined together to form a tile. For shallow survey tiles with a 2x2 microstep each detector pixel would see 16 different bits of sky. Offsets to other targets, or for sky estimation, are not included for clarity. A postscript version of this plot is also available.

The following examples illustrate how one might construct Minimum Schedulable Blocks using the iterator function described above. These examples are 'use cases' based on the UKIDSS surveys.

LAS MSB

GPS MSB

UDS MSB