An Observer's Guide to Taking CCD Data with ICE

P. Massey - T. E. Armandroff, - J. Barnes, - B. Bohannan, - T. Boroson, -
G. Jacoby, - S. Rooke, - R. Seaman - D. Silva, - D. Tody

13 September 1996

A PostScript version of this manual is available.

Contents

• Introduction
• Observing Overview: Taking the Data
  • The Only Command You Really Need: observe
  • Doing More with mores
  • Changing Things On the Fly
    • A Momentary Flutter: How to Pause and Resume an Exposure
    • Terminating an Exposure Early: Stop and Abort
    • Changing the Exposure Time
    • Changing the Title
  • The Amazing Power of flpr
  • How to Get Help
  • Other Useful Observing Words
    • Doing a Sequence of Observations
    • Running a Test Exposure Using test
• The Parameters Files
  • detpars
    • Digression: How To Choose A Gain
    • Digression: The Power of ccdinfo
  • instrpars
  • obspars
  • telpars
• Writing Your Data To Tape
  • Making a FITS tape
  • Safe Taping
  • Save-the-Bits!
• Focusing the Telescope for Direct Imaging: Don't Touch That Hand-Paddle!
• Summary of Useful IRAF Commands for Quick Look
• Logging In, What It Looks Like, and How to Get Out
  • Logging in and Firing up ICE and IRAF
  • What Windows Go Where: What Your Desktop Looks Like
  • Logging Out
  • Two Monitors?
• At The Very Beginning of Your Run: obsinit
• Keeping Your Data Organized: Directories, Subdirectories, and Pixel Files
• Taking the Bus: Alternative Schemes of Getting Your Data Home
• IRAF Networking
• Using ximtool
• Using imexamine
• Running ICE from a VT640
• Speed Reading
• IRAF Miscellanea
  • Analyzing Direct Focus Frames with kpnofocus
  • Focusing a Spectrograph with specfocus
  • Determining the gain and readnoise using findgain
  • Determining the shutter correction time with findshutcor
  • Checking the weather without leaving the dome: wdisplay and picking up the latest forecast.
• Being Environmentally Conscious: Scripts
• Other Nifty Things
• Ramps
• What ICE Really Does During An Exposure
• Problems?
• How To Get the Latest Copy of This Manual
• What's New?
  • Faster Read-outs and 16-bits!: Major Changes for Fall 1996

• Figures