How is KCWI different from other instruments?
When should I start my afternoon calibration sequence?
It is always a good idea to coordinate with your Staff Astronomer, but in general it's more than enough to start around 3pm of your observing date.
What kind of calibrations do I need?
KCWI has an automatic calibration tool. In general there is no need to know which calibrations are needed. The calibration tool has been developed in collaboration the data reduction pipeline, and produces all the necessary calibrations.
How do I chose the correct slicer and grating?
The slicer controls the field of view and the spatial sampling. The available spatial sampling is one of 1.3", 0.7" and 0.34" (large, medium and small slicer). Because the number of slices is always 24, the coarser sampling produces the larger FOV.
The grating controls the spectral resolution. We have a set of low, medium and high resolution gratings. Refer to configurations.
How do I perform a simple, typical KCWI observation?
The sequence is:
The typical exposure times are of the order of 20 minutes. For standards, we frequently have to reduce the exposure to a few minutes or even a few seconds.
I have an extended object. How often should I sample the sky and how do I do it?
There is no hard and fast rule for this. The most common strategy adopted by our observers is to sample the sky after every science exposure, but using half of the exposure time on sky.
You can move to the sky field in a number of ways. The easiest is to use the "en" command on any kcwi terminal. The arguments are the offsets in east and north. For example
> en 10 10
Note that if you move too much, the current guide star might fall off the guider field and a new guide star has to be acquired. Remember to coordinate these moves with your observing assistant.
How do I reduce my data?
KCWI has a data reduction pipeline. You can find it here. Please note that this pipeline is NOT officially supported by WMKO. The original developed is able to provide limited support. The best way to ask for help is to submit an issue on the github page. Your Staff Astronomer will not be able to answer pipeline questions.
If requested, we can run the pipeline at WMKO on your raw data. This does not mean that we will ensure data reduction or be able to help We will provide access to a copy of the data and to the pipeline, but it is the observer's responsibility to be familiar with the pipeline and run it.
I am interested in high accuracy astrometry for my data (tiled observations, for example).
For this science case, contact your Staff Astronomer and discuss the issue. In general, the solution is to do a pointing check before your science observation (the observing assistant knows what this means), and to repeat the pointing check at regular intervals.