The required structure for input data file is:
| parameter line |
| setup star #1 |
| setup star #2 |
| target record for central object (or position) |
| target record for additional objects - repeated as required |
| ... |
| ... |
| ... |
| last target record |
| blank line as eof |
The parameter line looks like:
'PNAME' NPLATE SKYRAD DX PA1 PA2 EXTEN DEXT NEXT EPOCHIN 
where the parameters and their default values are:
Default Parameter Description
NONAME PNAME Plate or field name, should have no more that 10 characters
and must be surrounded by ' ' (apostrophes). Upper case only.
1 NPLATE Number of plates (masks) for this field. Crowded fields may require
more than one mask per field.
7.5 SKYRAD The slit half-length in arcsecs.
0.400 DX The minimum inter-slit separation, i.e. edge-to-edge distance, in mm.
The default is recommended to avoid overlap.
0 PA1 Low end of the range of PA (degrees) to be searched; if a given PA
is needed, set PA1=PA2.
180 PA2 High end of the range of PA (degrees) to be searched; if a given PA
is needed, set PA1=PA2.
T EXTEND Flag for extending the length of object slitlets on the mask.
As described in section 2.2.3, the extension will be done only
for those objects with EFLAG=0.
0.5 DEXT Incremental step size for slit extension, in arc-secs.
7 NEXT The maximum number of extension steps at each end of a slit.
2000.0 EPOCHIN Epoch of the input coordinates
The following is a template file available on BigX in /u1/deveny/mslit/mslit/bin/cdfmt for the setup star and target object data:
******** SAMPLE RECORD FOR MSLIT PROGRAM ******** where: X = blank, n = number, t = text NUM OBJNAME RH RM RS.S DD DM DS.S WT E XXXnnnXXXXttttttttttXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXnnXnnXnn.nnXX-nnXnnXnn.nXnnnn.nXXXXXXXn/ 123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7