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DELVE Observing Documentation
Welcome to the DECam Local Volume Exploration Survey (DELVE) survey documentation. This document contains instructions for scheduling DELVE (2019A-0305).
To setup the DELVE observing tools, source the setup script:
> ssh -X [email protected]
> screen -S obztak
> cd /user/DECamObserver/kadrlica/delve
> source setup
This script should work with either bash (my favorite) or tcsh (default on observer2). If the script works, you should see '(delve)' prepended to your prompt.
DELVE has an automatic scheduling tool auto-obztak that is currently being tested. Ideally, you will be able to start auto-obztak at the beginning of the night and it will dynamically schedule the nights observing taking into account changing conditions (specifically the PSF and moon).
To enable auto-obztak follow the setup instructions above and then type
> auto-obztak autoobs.conf -t 15 -k 6
Like most commands, auto-obztak has a help option that can be access with the --help option. From that option, we see that -t 15 limits the maximum length of the queue to 15 minutes and -k 6 schedules chunks of 6 minutes.
When auto-obztak is called, it should print something like:
REMINDER: Press 'Enable Auto' on the SISPI Exposure Control tab
Scheduler starting
Waiting for AUTOOBS
At this point, move to the SISPI observer console and click the "Enable Auto" button on the "Exposure Control" tab. Once this is done, you should see auto-obztak being triggered to start scheduling exposures in the terminal window.
You can also explicitly schedule chunks or entire nights of observing in advance. This is recommended while auto-obztak is still being the tested.
You can schedule a full night using the 'schedule_night' tool:
> schedule_night --help
> schedule_night -n 20190212
This should create a directory called '20190212', containing a set of json files in chunks of 60 minutes. Once you have generated a set of json scripts, you can plot the results with the 'plot_json' script:
> plot_json 20190212/*.json
You can use the '-o 20190212.gif' to plot faster and save the output to an animated gif:
> plot_json 20190212/*.json -o 20190212.gif
To reschedule a specific chunk of exposures, you can use the 'schedule_chunk' script:
> schedule_chunk --help
> schedule_chunk --utc "2019/02/12 06:00:00"
This should produce a single json script spanning 1 hour starting at 2018/07/22 06:00:00. Again, you can plot the results of this script using 'plot_json'
> plot_json 20190212_06:00:00.json
When obztak schedules a chunk of exposures it checks the SISPI database to see what fields have already been observed. However, it does not have access to fields that are loaded on the SISPI queue but have not been observed yet. To tell obztak to avoid scheduling exposures from a previous chunk, you can pass that chunk into 'schedule_chunk':
> schedule_chunk --utc "2019/02/12 06:00:00" -c "20190212/20190212_05:08:30.json"
Here I have told obztak to avoid all fields that are in the 20190212_05:08:30.json file. Plot the output of the new file 20190212_06:00:00.json and see how it differs from the first time we generated the chunk.
> plot_json 20190212_06:00:00.json
--- Scheduling Modes ---
DELVE consists of three semi-independent observing programs:
- WIDE - A shallow survey of the southern sky
- DEEP - A deep survey of a small area of sky around deep fields
- MC - A medium depth survey around the Magellanic Clouds.
Currently, the DELVE observing works by independently scheduling observations for each of these survey components using the -mode option. To schedule a night in a specific mode
> schedule_night --mode wide 20190212; mv 20190212 20190212-wide
> schedule_night --mode mc 20190212; mv 20190212 20190212-mc
> schedule_night --mode deep 20190212; mv 20190212 20190212-deep
You can now choose which survey component to load depending on the observing conditions. The
Once you are satisfied with the quality of the scheduling scripts, move them into the directory labeled 'scripts/survey'. Try to organize the final scripts that you use into directories labeled by night. For example, I put the scripts that I planned to execute on 20190212 into 'scripts/20190212'. Since I am paranoid, also write protect the scripts after I move them:
> mv 20190212 scripts/survey/
> chmod a-w scripts/survey/20190212
To load a script into SISPI (more instructions here):
-> "Load Exposure Script"
-> "Choose File"
-> "/usr/remote/user/DECamObserver/ExposureScripts/User_scripts/2019A-0305"
-> Double click on the night and script that you want to load.
You can keep any notes about observations under the 'notes' directory.