WIROSpec manual
Draft of 2/22/2006

Arriving at WIRO
Plug in UPS power supply in the rear corner of the control room. There are 2 yellow plugs, once plugged in power will be supplied to the blue electronics rack and you should hear a soft 'ding-dong' sound which means the secondary mirror has not been initialized. To initialize the secondary you have to press the reset button on the blue electronics rack. Be sure also that the rack is set to 'HOLD MIRROR AT CENTERED COLLIMATED POSITION'. Turn on computers(3 total): Claudius, WIROPrime, Horatio.

Instrument Preparation
WIROSpec is a cassegrain focus instrument that uses the WIRO-PRIME CCD dewar, GAM and the large optical fiber assembly. The cass focus ring and GAM should be mounted and the CCD dewar should be in the spectrograph room on the instrument ready to use. The telescope should be pointing at zenith so that the GAM can be accessed from the observing platform. The CCD dewar should be filled with LN2 immediately upon arrival to ensure it begins cooling so it reaches -120°C before observing. While filling the WIRO-PRIME dewar all covers should remain on the lenses and mirrors to prevent condensation from forming on the elements.

GAM and Optical fiber
The gam is mounted to the rear of the telescope where there is an incoming f/27 beam. There is a 3-stage slide that holds: a thru mirror, a pellicle and a full mirror. The incoming beam can be sent in two directions: straight through to an focal reducer which converts the incoming beam to an f/9 beam which then enters the optical fiber, or at a right angle to a focal reducer which stops the beam to f/9 which in turn goes to a guider ccd(ST237-A). The optical fiber is encased in a protective tube that is mounted to the rear of the gam and is suspended by bungees to the telescope in such a way that the fiber is suspended by the telescope. In this way, the telescope supports the weight of the bundle and can be properly balanced. NOTE: ALTHOUGH IN A PROTECTIVE TUBE, NEVER ALLOW THE FIBER BUNDLE TUBE TO BEND SHARPLY(<90°). The gam contains two PHOTRON comparison lamps(CuAr and ThAr) which are powered by a power supply on the rear of the telescope which needs to be turned on before use.

Camera Lenses and gratings
There are multiple camera lenses and gratings available for use with WIROSpec.

Canon 85mm

109mm f/1.8

XCanon 120mm f/1.5

Mitaka 135mm f/1.8

Computer Interfaces

  1. Camera control interface

Log onto Claudius: user and password are posted. This is the camera control computer. Open an xterm and open the voodoo camera interface software by typing:
[claudius~]$voodoo >& /dev/null &
Resize the voodoo window to fit the screen and under the parameters tab set the temperature to -120°C, hit the apply button and then close the parameters window using the close button on the upper left(don't kill the window with the x in the upper right). The camera should now be interfaced with the computer. Check the current dewar temperature by clicking the check temp button, this will display the current temp inside the dewar. Click and check on the boxes: Open Shutter, Display Image, Beep, Save To Disk and Auto Incr. Specify the directory in which to save the images(/home/observer/"date"), and be sure to create this directory before trying to save there.

  1. GAM/spectrograph control interface

Log onto WIROPrime: user and password are posted. This is the filter wheel and focus control computer. Turn the power on to the CompuMotor control box(gray box next to WIROPrime) by flipping the switch on the r.h.s., 8 red lights and a green light should turn on. Double-click on wiro_spec.exe, this will open the spectrograph/gam control gui. Click on the connect button and the button should turn green(if not check that the CompuMotor box is on and that the camera is plugged in). Click on 'Initialize motors', the X and Y buttons as well as the zero axes button should turn green indicating that the x-y stage(moves the guide camera around) is in its home position. A green light indicating which of the three stages is in the light path should be lit. To move to a different stage click on the desired stage, the colors should all turn yellow, the desired stage should then light up green and the others should turn orange.

Obtaining Spectra
Things to do during the day. With one of the comparison lamps on and the full mirror in position take an exposure using the voodoo interface on Claudius. The image displayed should show a number of arcs made up of individual spots. Using the jog focus buttons on the wiro_spec gui move the focus until the best fwhm is reached. To measure the fwhm use imexamine and place the cursor on a bright dot on the image and hit the 'k' key, this will plot the counts of the column you clicked on and fit a gaussian to the data and display the fwhm. Flat fields should be taken with the white spot(HA 0.0 ; Dec -25.00 and dome azimuth is at 142°), for 300s at 450nm with the 2400l/mm and X-Canon 120mm. Create a fiber/column key to use if none exists for the current set-up. Use implot to show traces of the individual fibers. In IRAF go to the imred--hydra package and type 'epar apfind'. With the window open, zoom in on a region so you can see roughly 15 fiber traces and the numbers above them. To zoom you can use the 'e' key to define the lower left and upper right corners or you can define a left boundary using 'w j' and a right boundary using 'w k'. To pan the window use 'w r'(right) or 'w l'(left). Look for the missing fiber from the image near column 1900(XCanon 2400l/mm), this is fiber 155, place the cursor at the location corresponding to the broken fiber in the graphics window and hit 'o' and re-label as 155. Pan left and right to find missing numbers, hit 'n' to add a fiber if it was missed or remove extras with 'd'. Once ordered quit using 'q' and save=yes, this creates a database folder in the current directory. In the database folder is a file named ap'xxx'(where 'xxx' is the image file used in hydra) type !grep begin ap'xxx' > test , this will produce an aperture filelist with the associated column numbers.