THE AUTOMATED CCD LOG

The Autolog pulls information from your image headers to create the log. Note: Only logs images written to FITS format.

To start the autolog program:

  • When observing with HYDRA/Sparsepak open a terminal on wiyn-1/wiyn-2 and type:
      > ssh observer@cork
      > /usr/local/gui/bin/autolog

  • When observing with MIMO open a terminal on wiyn-1/wiyn-2 and type:
      > ssh wiyn_ccd@sand
      > /usr/local/gui/bin/autolog

  • When observing with WHIRC open a terminal on wiyn-1/wiyn-2 and type:
      > ssh observer@dust
      > /usr/local/gui/bin/autolog

  • This will bring up the CCD Autolog Control Panel shown right.

  • In the Image directory box, type in the full path to your working directory -- where your data is being written (e.g. /data1/wiyn_ccd/night1).

  • Select which instrument you are using from the instrument drop down list.

  • Click on Start Logging. This will begin writing the log of images written to the selected directory.

[AUTOLOG CONTROL PANEL]

The images (.fits images only) are written to the log after the exposure has readout. An example log is shown below. Every time an image is logged, the log page is written to a postscript file and saved. These files are stored in the top level directory (e.g. /md1/wiyn_ccd/ for MiniMo) and are called autolog_page1.ps, etc. Each page is then printed when it is full. One nice feature of this log is that you can type virtually anywhere within the log - you can edit any field or add comments wherever you like.

Note: Image root names that contain a period will not show up correctly in the log (e.g. n001.0002.fits). To avoid this, make sure your image root names do not contain periods.

Note: Test images and focus sequences will show up on the log with a sequence number of zero.

[logsheet image]

Last updated Oct. 15, 2010