Data format and FITS headers

NOT2MEF (the software that changes data formats into MEF, flips data to have standard orientation, and writes additional FITS headers) has been successfully installed on the observing computers for MOSCA and FIES. It is ready to be installed for the other instruments as well, probably after the change of the data acquisition computers. All the main functionality have been implemented.

Also, ways have been looked at of coding multi-amplifier information into headers that are easily understood by data reduction packages. As part of looking at the possibility of reading the ALFOSC CCD through 2 amplifiers, data have been processed which afterwords could be run through 'standard' IRAF tasks to perform photometric measurements.

A GUI-based tool to edit the instrument definition files for ALFOSC and MOSCA in a consistent way has been developed and is being tested. The system is based on a revised list of filter names, with central wavelength and width information for all filters, plus passband and photometric system for the standard wide-band filters, and addition comments (with redshift information if applicable) for narrow-band filters.