This is a place to keep old and out-dated information about HPF

Much of this *was* in use at some point, and mostly probably still works. However, it's not relevant to how we currently use the instrument and has been relegated to this page.

• Details on calibration control information
• Low-level observing commands
• File system information
• Telluric standard star exposure times
• Navigating weird behavior in Screen sessions
• Old method to update Q* FITS header keywords
• Rare errors and what to do
• Restarting the HPF client (rarely used)

OLD instrument control information is here

Detailed calibration control information

Some targets, usually the brighter ones and the precision radial velocity targets, will want to use the lfc to get the best possible radial velocities. The lfc remains on at all times but to include it in the observation you need to open its internal shutter. To turn it off and on use the following commands:

lfc_open

lfc_close

In some cases, the laser comb may be down and we must use the following:

etalon_open

etalon_close

Note that each of these command sets are executed in the Scripts window. The open command will usually take a few seconds to complete and you will see a variety of messages coming to the window.

After PartA cals are done, the etalon lamp is turned off. It can be turned back on with: ./hpf_TurnOn.sh Etalon

That takes 10 minutes to warm up.

Then, throughout the nights, I try to take the etalon cals at least once an hour: ./hpf_takeEtalonHRCalExposure.sh 3

Doing 3 of those takes about 9 minutes. You can run: ./hpf_takeEtalonHRCalExposure.sh 1 to run a single ramp (takes 3 minutes).

For targets which request LFC, I think our approach right now is to:

-keep cal_closed
-run etalon cals before observing the target (while slewing/setting up)
-run etalon cals after the target

At the end of the night turn off the Etalon, or let the morning cals do it for you ./hpf_TurnOff.sh Etalon

Low level observing commands

The command to execute any basic observation is hpframp targetname #reads_per_ramp #ramps [obs#]. Each read is 10.5 seconds so a 30 read observation would be 315 seconds. There is a 2 read reset at the beginning of the exposure that adds to the overhead. You can include a optional observing number, but if the software has not been restarted and you do not include this observing number it will use the next observing number. If you restart the software the count starts again at 1 and the next target will be included in directory 0001 even if there is data in that directory, however, due to the time stamp no data will be overwritten.

Example:

hpframp AD_Leo 30 2

You can set the type to Eng so that they are not science exposures and sent to the TACC by doing a tims detect pyhxrg:SetObstype:Eng

The command (as hpf@hpf) to execute any basic observation is hpfseconds targetname exposuretime #exposures [obs#]. If the target name has a space we should use double quotes around the name, e.g. "please do not use spaces in target names" The exposure time is in seconds. You can include a optional observing number, but if the software has not been restarted and you do not include this observing number it will use the next observing number. If you restart the software the count starts again at 1 and the next target will be included in directory 0001 even if there is data in that directory, however, due to the time stamp no data will be overwritten.

Examples:

hpfseconds GJ_3470 315 5 - 5 exposures of 315 seconds each.

hpfseconds GJ_3470 315 5 100 - 5 exposures of 315 seconds each to be saved in directory 0100.

File system information

Data is stored in /HPFData/LinuxGigE/YYYYMMDD/hpf from other machines, e.g. mcs, or /home/hpf/HPFData/LinuxGigE/YYYYMMDD/hpf on the hpf machine, and copied to /hetdata/data/YYYYMMMDD/hpf/ as well. Scripts for changing the instrument settings are located in /home/hpf/Scripts/InstConfig

Telluric standard stars

For telluric standards you should not observe anything brighter than V=4.5 (our lists have been culled to remove these and emission line objects). If you find that any telluric is in a visual binary with a brighter star please please feel free to remove that from the list and let astronomer@… know so that we can edit the online list.

For exposure times please use:

• 315 sec exposure (30 reads) for anything fainter than V = 5.8
• 105 sec exposure (10 reads) for anything between 4.5 and 5.8 in V

Be sure to edit the night report to change the Data Type to "telluric"

NB Telluric standards must be taken with LFC closed

Navigating weird behavior in the screens

Once before (Dec 2022) we saw some weird behavior where HPF appeared not to accept commands (PR 6136). The issue was that the HPF Detector Client screen was stuck in "Copy Mode", probably from an errant CTRL-A ESC command. Simply pressing ESC again fixed the issue. If this happens again in the future, it would be helpful to check the screen/terminal titles of each Screen session. This is not possible in the "rasession" style interface, but if you connect to each Screen separately we can check the titles to see if Copy Mode is enabled.

Consider the following steps, too:

0) Remember that screen can be blocking if it gets into its 'copy mode' (ctrl-a ESC), and probably several other ways to prompt this state too. If it is blocking you loose the ability to communicate with the process running inside of it.

1) Pause any scripts that are running - you don't want to get things running and then have a script send a bunch of queued up commands in quick succession before you've been able to check functionality.

2) Try to connect to the screen session:

screen -x hpf

3) If this loads like normal and you see the detector client running, then the problem is not the screen session. Proceed with troubleshooting re. detector crash/non-responsiveness

4) If you do not get a normal detector client, but instead just see a cursor and the process looks hung, try giving it *one* ctrl-c. This may unstick the screen session by killing whatever process in it had hung. Then the detector client software should show up like normal.

Arrow-ing up to see what happened

If you missed something that has scrolled off the top of the screen and you want to see what it was you can do a <ctrl>-a followed by an <esc> to get into "copy" mode. Then use the arrows to move the cursor up to get to the message of interest. To leaves copy mode hit two <esc> in a row. To see the full set of screens commands please see our Screens Summary Page.

Old method to update Q* FITS header keywords

Now replaced by hpf_data_fix, but retained here for completeness:

1. ssh hpf@hpf
2. cd /home/hpf/HPFData/LinuxGigE/20201014/hpf/0010/fits/
3. /mnt/het/hetdex/bin/headfits -m -k QIDX -t int -v 6709 *.fits
4. /mnt/het/hetdex/bin/headfits -m -k QPROG -v UT20-1-999 *.fits
5. /mnt/het/hetdex/bin/headfits -m -k QRA -v '01:02:03.40' *.fits
6. /mnt/het/hetdex/bin/headfits -m -k QDEC -v '+45:34:23.1' *.fits
7. /mnt/het/hetdex/bin/headfits -m -k QEQUINOX -t float -v 2000 *.fits
8. /mnt/het/hetdex/bin/headfits -m -k QPMRA -t float -v 308.227 *.fits
9. /mnt/het/hetdex/bin/headfits -m -k QPMDEC -t float -v -608.695 *.fits
10. /mnt/het/hetdex/bin/headfits -m -k QEPOCH -t float -v 2015.5 *.fits


We must fix all exposures and all values: QIDX, QPROG, QRA, QDEC, QEQUNIOX, QPMRA, QPMDEC, QEPOCH


You can extract these values from the queue database with this command if you want, replacing the IDX number for the target you want:

[stevenj@zeus ~]$ mysql -hnossy htopx -e "select idx,plan,ra,declination,equinox,pmra,pmdec,pmepoch from plandb_latest_cur where idx=4000"

rare errors

If see 'Error' in hpf session of client is not operation normally
you can try to restart client

If you get the '''QSocketNotifier:''' in the detector client window you can try restarting it but if the error message comes back again then the instrument is down and you should call Chad.

If part A script hang on message:

"WARNING: Setting LFC flux to High .." or "Not yet set to high mode"

means absence of communication to LFC computer. 
It possible to abort script with Ctrl-C and email/call Connor for help.

Until problem fixed it is best to assume that LFC is down and use Etalon

restarting the the HPF client

Note that the HPF client is restarted automatically every day 16:45 UT just after the LN2 refill. The act of restarting the HPF makes a small change to the instrument temperature which impacts RV stability.

restart_detectorclient is called daily as part of the crontab at 16:45 UT to restart the HPF client daily. It can also be called on demand (but we very rarely do this).

There are two executable scripts:

1) start_hpfdetectorInfloop.sh - this is running in the 'hpf' screen session, and takes care of automatically restarting the client after it is shutdown

2) restart_detectorclient - can be called from any hpf terminal (but preferably the 'scripts' session. This will trigger a shutdown sequence. After the shutdown, start_hpfdetectorInfloop.sh will automatically take care of bringing things back up.

Check that the observation number is correct with pyhxrg:GetObsnum

if it is not then use the following command to set it: tims Detect pyhxrg:SetObsnum:nn where nn is the number from previous GetObsnum command