GEMINI (Jan2001)         Gemini IRAF package v1.1       GEMINI (Jan2001)

Release date: January 29, 2001

This document describes the revisions relative to the Gemini IRAF package v1.0


PRIMARY REVISIONS:

1) Tasks for reduction of OSCIR data. A new package "oscir" is included.
2) Smaller bug fixes in the "quirc" package.
3) Smaller bug fixes in the task gemtools.imcoadd.


DETAILS OF THE REVISIONS:

oscir.oflat
oscir.oreduce
oscir.oscirinfo
  A new package "oscir" is released. Basic tasks to derive flat fields (oflat) 
  and combine the images from the different chop and nod positions (oreduce) 
  are included. A description of the OSCIR data format and how to reduce OSCIR 
  data is available as the task "oscirinfo".

quirc
  Various typographical errors in the help files have been fixed.

quirc.qfastsky
  A warning regarding differences in exposure time is now only issued if the  
  exposure times differ with more than 0.1 sec. The QUIRC controller often 
  causes exposure time differences less than 0.1 sec for exposures with 
  identical requested exposure time. The small differences have no implications
  for the reduction of the data.

quirc.qsky
  In the old version size of the derived masks was hard-wired to 
  1024 pixels x 1024 pixels. In the new version the required size is read from
  the headers of the input images.
  A bug that caused the task crash to if no objects were found has been fixed.
  The determination of the FWHM using the task gemtools.gemseeing has been 
  improved, especially for cases where FWHM > qsky.rebin.
  Improved error trapping for unallowed parameters values.

quirc.qflat
  In the previous version, the task would start looking for the normalization
  constant within a fixed range.  While appropriate for QUIRC data, if this
  task were used on data in which the median data value exceeded the usual
  QUIRC data range, the task would never find an appropriate normalization
  value and the resulting flat field image would not be properly normalized.
  This has now been fixed so that the task now looks for the normalization
  constant starting in the range defined by thresh_flo and thresh_fup.
  The default value for thresh_fup has been changed from 30000. to 40000.
  A warning regarding differences in exposure time is now only issued if the 
  exposure times differ with more than 0.1 sec. The QUIRC controller often 
  causes exposure time differences less than 0.1 sec for exposures with 
  identical requested exposure time. The small differences have no implications
  for the reduction of the data.
  Improved error trapping for unallowed parameter values. 
  Parameter names combine, reject and expname changed to combtype, rejtype
  and key_exptime, respectively. This makes the parameter names consistent with
  those used by qsky and qfastsky.

quirc.qreduce
  If any of the parameters filteri (i=1,6) are set to identical values, the
  first existing flat field that matches the filter header keyword is used.
  For example, if filter1="Kp" and filter2="Kp", then flatimage1 is used for the
  filter Kp, if that image exists.
  If flatimagei=="", the filter defined by the matching parameter filteri is
  ignored.
  Improved error trapping for unallowed parameter values.

gemtools.gemqa
  The value "unknown" is now allowed as the value for the data quality 
  assessment keywords FINALINT, FINALIQ, PICONFIG, PITARGET.

gemtools.gemseeing
  Corrected entries in gemseing.dat are provided for Hokupaa+QUIRC and OSCIR.
  The entries in v1.0 contained slightly incorrect pixel scales for the two 
  instruments.

gemtools.imcoadd
  The default value parameter "instscale" has been changed from 1.6 to 1.611444
  The new version of the task has an improved handling of multiple occurrences 
  of same object in the coordinate files.
  A warning message from "tinfo" about an empty table of objects has been 
  removed - the case is handled by "imcoadd" as a case of no objects in common.
  The flagging of cosmic-ray events occasionally caused a floating point 
  overflow fault. This problem has been resolved.

