NSFCam 5 Minute Manual
NSFCam General Startup and Shutdown Guide, includes information for troubleshooting, and how to start/stop/restart the temperature and motor contro daemons.
NSFCam Temperature Control, information for warming up or cooling down the instrument.
*** Instrument Start Up ***
1) Start VNC viewer 3 and 4 (ask TO or support scientist for VNC password of the day). The NSFCam XUI and DV are in stefan:3, whereas t3remote and starcat are usually run from stefan:4.
2) Set well depth in "Setup" tab (described below)
3) Enable TCS interaction in "Setup" tab
4) Enable mechanism control in "Setup" tab. Once clicked, this can take up to 20 seconds to complete. If it takes longer, see the troubleshooting guide.
5) Set filename. Turn autosave on in "Observation" tab (optional)
*** Killing the XUI to restart ***
1) Should the NSFCAM2 XUI freeze and need to be restarted, click on the 'QUIT' button. If this works, click on the NSFCam Client button on the NSFCam user desktop to restart the xterm and XUI.
2) If clicking the 'QUIT button didn't work, you need to kill the xterm. Move the XUI window to the side, and find its xterm. Find the x button in the top corner of the xterm, and click it to kill the xterm. The XUI should die at the same time. If that worked, click on the NSFCam Client button on the NSFCam user desktop to restart the xterm and XUI.
3) If that didn't work, call for help.
*** Instrument Shut Down ***
1) Blank off filter wheel
2) Click on the yellow Logout button.
3) Close VNC viewer
*** Top of Window ***
1) GO: Takes an image
2) STOP: Stops the integration and returns the detector to be ready
for another image. Use sparingly
3) Go and Save: Takes an image and saves it to disk
4) Connect: To connect the XUI, should only be necessary when restarting the XUI
5) Quit: To quit the XUI
*** Mechanisms (Bottom of window) ***
1) Waveplate/Polarizer: Normally out
2) CVF wheel
- open for L' and M' and near-IR MKO filters
- PK50 for narrow band filters
- Can choose pre-set positions in CVF 1, 2, and 3
- CVF 1 covers 1.51 to 2.52 microns
- CVF 2 covers 2.70 to 4.25 microns
- CVF 3 covers 4.45 to 5.50 microns
- Should also be able to select custom CVF wheel positions
- As of Feb 24, 2007, cannot select custom CVF positions
3) Filter wheel
- Use left mouse button to choose desired filter
*** Observation Tab ***
1) Intergraton time
- edit as desired, remeber to hit enter after editing
- minimum exposure time = 0.44s in single read out mode with 3 microsecond pixel sampling time
2) Coadds
3) Cycles
4) Beam Mode
- Options are A, B, or AB
- For AB mode, you'll probably want to click "C=A-B" to automatically see
the difference between these beams in DV
5) Readout Mode
- Options are "Raw", "Single" and "Double", ignore "SUR"
- Raw mode is for high background wavelengths (longer than 3 microns and broadband) when the observer
wants to see every read out, or otherwise wants to see the raw data. Also used for engineering purposes.
In this mode, the array voltages are reset, the detector is exposed, then the image is read out.
In this mode, more light yields lower counts.
- Single mode is for high background wavelengths (longer than 3 microns and broadband)
- In this mode, the array voltages are reset, the detector is exposed, then the image is read out.
This mode allows for shorter exposure times, at the expense of more noise (which is insignificant given the
high background). Similar to RAW mode in that more light yields lower counts.
However, all of the images for a set of coadds are saved to a single FITS file rather than to individual files.
- Double read mode is used shortward of 3 microns, and can be used for narrow
band filters beyond 3 microns
- In this mode, the array voltages are reset, the detector is read, it's exposed, then it's read again and the
difference is written as the image. The minimum effective exposure time is longer, but the noise is lower.
6) Full Array: only option currently available, sub-arrays not offered yet
7) Object/Comment: Edit as desired, this will go into the header
8) Filename: Edit as desired
9) Storage path: Data is stored on the scratch disk /scrs1. The storage path is set at the time of login to:
/scrs1/nsfcam2/guestXX/date.time
10) Next Image Number: Self explainatory, can be edited as desired, increments with each
saved file.
*** Setup Tab ***
- Working down the page, from to to botton...
1) DV Enable
- must be enabled (clicked) to get image updates in DV
- hostname should alreaady be set as "local host"
2) Set Well Depth
- This button sets the bias voltage and gain in the detector. The choices are:
- Low bias, high gain. Best for low background, faint objects
- Medium bias, high gain.
- High bias, high gain.
- High bias, low gain. Used when maximum dynamic range is needed, such as M' imaging.
3) Enable buttons
- Enable TCS interaction should only be enabled when you are observing.
Please do not enable this when the day crew or other observers are
using the telescope that that an offset or beam switch is not
accidentally sent to the telescope
- When motors/mechanisms are enabled, it takes several seconds for the motor controller daemon to connect and
poll the status of the motors, please be patient (should be less than 20 seconds, if greater,).
there may be a problem).
4) Image rotation and invert
Last updated: May 10, 2013