EMIR OSP Updates
This page details the most recent updates to the EMIR OSP software. Please check this page regularly for recent updates.
The current OSP version is: 3.5n Release date: 02-09-2025
New features in the OSP
The main change in version 3.5 is the use of new CSU calibration and parameters file that will result in a slightly better centring of the mask.
Starting from version 2.6.6, the OSP has incorporated interesting features that are commented on briefly here.
- At the time of the mask writing (important, button WRITE that saves the mask, not button SAVE that stores the full project, and that may contains more than one mask) three files under the same root name are produced:
- <file_name>.csu: the CSU configuration file
- <file_name>.xml: the mask file, containing the full information of the mask, including that of the subset of the user catalogue pertaining to the mask.
- <file_name>.conf: an information file on the objects in the mask to be exported to the fits header, as explained below.
- The information in the user catalogue other than the object coordinates will be transferred to a separate output file (<file_name>.conf). This file will be digested by the EMIR control system and written into the fits header of all the files taken with a given CSU configuration file. For each object, there are two new fits KEYWORDS:
- OBJSLNN, with NN running from 1 to 55: the ObjID in the user catalogue assigned to slit NN, and to all the slits joined to this.
- COMSLNN, with NN running from 1 to 55: the object comments in the user catalogue (first 40 characters only) assigned to slit NN, and to all the slits joined to this.
The user may select to not add any info other than object coordinates in the input catalogue to the OSP. Then, these keywords will remain empty, but will still be in the fits header. It is also optional to supply the <file_name>.conf file to the EMIR control system but if this is not supplied, the new keywords will be empty, as before.
It is particularly important to supply at least an ObjID for the objects used as a reference in joined slits. This is because joining two or more slits for a reference object results in an additional margin of error to locate the reference object in case of bad initial pointing (which should not happen). In addition, it may also result in a uncertainties in the fine centring of the mask if an unwanted object is also present in the joined slits. Remember that EMIR operates in a 10m class telescope. In those cases, the acquisition software will consider the joined slits as a single area for searching only if all the OBJSLNN keywords contain the same string, which will be the case if the object used as reference has an identifier in the input catalogue.
- There will be a unique UUID identifier generated at the time of writing the mask (again, button WRITE). These UUID will be heading the xml, csu and conf files and exported to the fits header under the keyword MASKID
EMIR OSP Cookbook Updates
This section will be used to outline the most recent changes to the OSP documentation.
The current OSP Cookbook version is: 0.6 Release date: 12-04-2019