Processing CONTOBS output

Note

Getting the output files

• Type "ftp blazar".
• Enter username and password.
• Type "cd dub1:<kurpitsa>".
• Type "mget YYMMDD.GIX;*" (where YYMMDD is the date of the observations).
• Type "exit".

Creating .dat and .dr21 files

• Type "read_contobs_data.pl" (run the program on antimatter or some other computer that has /data mounted).
• Enter input file, meaning the GIX-file, which was transfered from blazar.
• Enter output file, that is, the desired .dat file.
• Alternatively, you can start the program by typing: "read_contobs_data.pl inputfile outputfile".
• Monitor output to see if errors occur (you can run this program under emacs shell to make it easier; command "Esc-x shell").
• Check the output file if the results are OK. "Alert" means very short integration times or high rms values, check them and don't accept any observations that are of poor quality (also others than the ones marked with the alert!), i.e. there should be no such data left in the file that you would discard from the log.
• Insert tau and cal values by hand. The values of tau vary from 0.045 (clear and dry) to 0.05 (wet and cloudy) in winter and, respectively, from 0.050 to 0.060 in summer. Choose a suitable value according to the weather.
• Remove the header line, which begins with #.
• Copy & paste DR21 observations into a .dr21 file.
• Copy both files to /home/your_home_directory/GIX directory.
• Now the both files should have with the following columns in the following order: date, time, source, azimuth, elevation, azimuth offset error, elevation offset error, result, rms, Tant, Tout, RelH, tau, cal.
• In the case of one-point source, the value of azimuth offset error and elevation offset error is "1p" (without quotation marks).
• You can, of course, write the files by hand, but make sure that you include every (tab-separated) column mentioned above.

Notes about read_contobs_data.pl

• There are still some bugs in the program and some of them are listed here:
• if you observe the same source many times in a row at 1p (without doing anything else in between), the program can't separate these observations and reads the results from a wrong row. It has been fixed so, that there is also an "intermediate result" in the stdout, and you can use that instead.
• If you stop the observation with ctrl y instead of 0, the results can't be written to a file. So, always end the observation with 0 before exiting the program.
• There is also problems with 5p observations, if contobs can't get a fit from the last round. There is nothing to do about that, but maybe use the results from the earlier round, or checking the original vax file for results.
• When using this program to write results from an autofile, please write the results also to the log book.