VLT Instrument Pipelines
Introduction
In collaboration with the various instrument consortia, the Data Flow System Group has undertaken to implement data reduction pipelines for the most commonly used VLT/VLTI instrument modes. These data reduction pipelines have three main purposes:
- Data quality control - pipelines are used to produce the quantitative information necessary to monitor instrument performance (see the ESO Quality Control web pages for more information).
- Master calibration product creation - pipelines are used to produce master calibration products (e.g. combined bias frames, super-flats, wavelength dispersion solutions).
- Science product creation - using pipeline-generated master calibration products, science products are produced for supported instrument modes (e.g. combined ISAAC jitter stacks; bias-corrected, flat-fielded FORS images, wavelength-calibrated UVES spectra). The accuracy of the science products can be limited both by the quality of the available master calibration products and by the algorithmic implementation of the pipelines themselves. In particular, adopted reduction strategies may not be suitable for all scientific goals. Therefore, ESO assumes no responsibility for the usefulness of reduced data for any specific scientific project.
Pipelines Running Environments: Gasgano and Esorex
Home users can use Gasgano, a Java-based data file organizer developed and maintained by ESO. It can be used to manage and organize in a systematic way the astronomical data observed and produced by all VLT compliant telescopes. Gasgano is a graphics-based software tool for organising and viewing data files produced by the VLT Control System. Gasgano offers functionalities for data viewing, grouping, sorting, classification, searching, and filtering of data. And, of course, Gasgano will run any requested CPL recipe on the selected data.
Esorex, a command-line utility for running pipeline recipes is also available. It may be embedded by users at their home institute into data reduction scripts for the automation of processing tasks.
Both Gasgano and Esorex are included in the pipeline public release packages.
Pipeline Releases
The Data Flow Systems Department makes also these data reduction pipelines available to the user community. This page provides access to the pipelines currently available.
Latest Releases:December 18, 2007: Public release of the UVES pipeline 3.4.5
November 23, 2007: Update of the NACO pipeline 3.7.0
November 07, 2007: Public release of the CRIRES pipeline 1.5.0
October 25, 2007: Update of the VIMOS pipeline 2.1.6
October 24, 2007: Update of the FORS pipeline 3.1.7
October 19, 2007: Update of the SINFONI pipeline 1.8.2
October 12, 2007: Update of the UVES pipeline 2.9.7 (based on MIDAS)
October 10, 2007: Update of the ISAAC pipeline 5.7.0
October 10, 2007: Update of the SOFI pipeline 1.3.0
July 6, 2007: Public release of the AMBER pipeline 2.3.7
Publications and Links
VLT Science Products Produced by Pipelines, 2004, D.R. Silva & M. Peron, ESO Messenger 118.The ESO Quality Control Group processes VLT data and monitors the instrument and data quality and also provides a summary of current pipeline status.