MIDI

External Links

(not maintained since early 2006)

Software

oiTargMIDI.fits is a target list in OIFITS format. It uses target names from identifiers compatible with IAU coordinate specifications. This is generated from Simbad results fed with the apparent target coordinates as listed above.

VLTI Humidity

History of Data

We provide results of the readings of the four temperature/humidity HMT 323/HMP 303 sensors

installed in the VLTI laboratory

on Paranal

in Sep 2004 within the GENIE T/RH sensor project:

PDF	Period	FITS
2005-01.pdf	Jan 1-6, Jan 13-31, 2005
2005-02.pdf	Feb 1-28, 2005
2005-03.pdf	Mar 1-31, 2005
2005-04.pdf	Apr 1-30, 2005
2005-05.pdf	May 1-31, 2005
2005-06.pdf	Jun 1-30, 2005
2005-07.pdf	Jul 1-31, 2005
2005-08.pdf	Aug 1-31, 2005
2005-09.pdf	Sep 1-8, Sep 13-30, 2005
2005-10.pdf	Oct 1-31, 2005
2005-11.pdf	Nov 1-30, 2005
2005-12.pdf	Dec 1-31, 2005
2006-01.pdf	Jan 1-31, 2006
2006-02.pdf	Feb 1-28, 2006
2006-03.pdf	Mar 1-31, 2006
2006-04.pdf	Apr 1-30, 2006
2006-05.pdf	May 1-31, 2006
2006-06.pdf	June 1-30, 2006
2006-07.pdf	July 1-31, 2006
2006-08.pdf	Aug 1-31, 2006
2006-09.pdf	Sep 1-30, 2006
2006-10.pdf	Oct 3, 2006, Oct 7-31 2006
2006-11.pdf	Nov 1-30, 2006
2006-12.pdf	Dec 1-31, 2006
2007-01.pdf	Jan 1-31, 2007
2007-02.pdf	Feb 1-28, 2007
2007-03.pdf	Mar 1-31, 2007
2007-04.pdf	Apr 1-30, 2007
2007-05.pdf	May 1-31, 2007
2007-06.pdf	Jun 1-30, 2007
2007-07.pdf	Jul 1-31, 2007
2007-08.pdf	Aug 1-31, 2007
2007-09.pdf	Sep 1-30, 2007
2007-10.pdf	Oct 1-31, 2007
2007-11.pdf	Nov 1-30, 2007
2007-12.pdf	Dec 1-31, 2007
2008-01.pdf	Jan 1-31, 2008
no data	Feb 1-29, 2008
2008-03.pdf	Mar 1-31, 2008
2008-04.pdf	Apr 1-30, 2008
2008-05.pdf	May 1-31, 2008
2008-06.pdf	Jun 1-30, 2008
2008-07.pdf	Jul 1-31, 2008
2008-08.pdf	Aug 1-31, 2008
2008-09.pdf	Sep 1-30, 2008
2008-10.pdf	Oct 1-31, 2008
2008-11.pdf	Nov 1-30, 2008
2008-12.pdf	Dec 1 - 31, 2008
2009-01.pdf	Jan 1 -31, 2009	2009-01.fits
2009-02.pdf	Feb 1-28, 2009	2009-02.fits
2009-03.pdf	Mar 1-31 2009	2009-03.fits
2009-04.pdf	Apr 1 - 30 2009	2009-04.fits
2009-05.pdf	May 1 - 31 2009	2009-05.fits
2009-06.pdf	June 1-30, 2009	2009-06.fits
2009-07.pdf	July 1-31, 2009	2009-07.fits
2009-08.pdf	Aug 1-31, 2009	2009-08.fits
2009-09.pdf	Sep 1-30, 2009	2009-09.fits
2009-10.pdf	Oct 1-31, 2009	2009-10.fits
2009-11.pdf	Nov 1-30, 2009	2009-11.fits
2009-12.pdf	Dec 1-31, 2009	2009-12.fits
2010-01.pdf	Jan 1-31, 2010	2010-01.fits
2010-02.pdf	Feb 1-28, 2010	2010-02.fits
2010-03.pdf	Mar 1 - 31, 2010	2010-03.fits
2010-04.pdf	Apr 1-30, 2010	2010-04.fits
2010-05.pdf	May 1-31, 2010	2010-05.fits
2010-06.pdf	June 1-30, 2010	2010-06.fits
2010-07.pdf	July 1-31, 2010	2010-07.fits
2010-08.pdf	Aug 1-31, 2010	2010-08.fits
2010-09.pdf	Sep 1-30, 2010	2010-09.fits
2010-10.pdf	Oct 1-31, 2010	2010-10.fits
	Nov 1-30, 2010	2010-11.fits
	Dec 1-31, 2010	2010-12.fits
	Jan 1-31, 2011	2011-01.fits
	Feb 1-28, 2011	2011-02.fits
	Mar 1, 2011 - current	2011-03.fits

The outdoor parameters labeled "ambient" in the PostScript graphs are retrieved from the server of the Paranal environmental database .

To plot the values of a specific sensor contained in the FITS files with fv one can

fv filename.fits
Click on All in the ENVIRONMENT row of the GUI named fv: Summary of ...
Click on Edit of the GUI named HT_VLTI_20xx-xx.fits[1]
Enter a selection like SENSOR == 4 in the Rows to select or condition
click on Select (the corresponding column numbers turn yellow in the other window)
click on Tools->PLot of the GUI named Binary Table of HT_....[1]
enter TIME in the X field and VALUE in the Y field of the GUI named Select Plot Columns
click on Use selected rows in the GUI Select Plot columns
click on Go in the GUI Select Plot columns

The FITS format is inclined towards VLT-ICD-AOS-15750-0004.

The report Calibration of temperature and relative humidity sensors for use on the VLT-Interferometer by S Albrecht, E J Bakker, J A de Jong, R N Tubbs, J Meisner and R le Poole was published in the Proc. SPIE 5491 as article #142 , page 1266 . The sensor locations are a permuted version of the one described in the installation report , but may have been changed by Paranal personnel in the meantime. Section 6.1 of UL-TRE-AOS-15753-0010 and SPIE 6268, p 1244 show some derived statistics.

Note that Paranal engineers sometimes change the readout period from somewhere between a minute to five minutes. The apparent smoothness of the data in the graphs may vary, even though the actual fluctuations in the parameters may have been the same.

No data are shown for February 2008, because none have been made available by ESO.

The ambient humidity is artificially quantized to discrete values of integer percentages by some poorly advised VLT software. I am therefore plotting these as points, not lines.

Subscription: Unlike the data measured by the weather station on the Paranal platform, the values of the four temperature/humidity sensors are not available from any ESO web page to our knowledge. Please contact ESO, S Wehner and/or F Puech , if you need an independent channel of subscription to these data. For PWV and 300 mbar wind speeds see latest_forecast.tar.gz .

Ambient Data Server Interface

The ambient data server tabulates data in ASCII format through an URL of the form http://archive.eso.org/asm/ambient-server-whole-night?night=+d+m+y&site=paranal&data=Q, where the "d", "m" and "y" are to be replaced by day number, month and year, and where "Q" is one of {T,H,P,W,S,R,E,w,d}. Example: http://archive.eso.org/asm/ambient-server-whole-night?night=+6+Jun+2007&site=paranal&data=T to access the data for the 6th of June for the parameter T. It looks as if the 1-letter keys mean the following: T=temperature [C], H=relative humidity [%], P=pressure [hPa], W=wind speed [m/s], S=DIMM seeing [arcsec], R=tau0 [msec], E= relative flux RMS, w=wind direction [deg North], d=dust [log10 of s.th.].
humStatH02004.ps

, humStatH02005.ps

, humStatH02006.ps

, humStatH02007.ps

, humStatH02008.ps

, humStatH02009.ps

, and humStatH02010.ps

are PostScript plots of the water vapor densities at the VLT weather pole over the past years. (These are 1.3 MB per file).

Antofagasta Radiosonde data

scfa.eps

contains water mixing ratios at altitudes between 2 and 10 km for the years 2007 and 2008 extracted from the atmospheric data files

provided by the Dept. of Atmospheric Science of the U Wyoming.

VLTI

Sky coverage

VLTI Sky coverage maps issshadowAz.ps

(PostScript, 760 kB) for various station coordinates similar to Fig 3-7 and 3-8 in VLT-ICD-ESO-15000-1918. The grid has a spacing of 30 degrees along the azimuth (0-360) and of 20 degrees along the altitude (0-80). The convention of VLT-ICD-ESO-15000-1918 is used: az=0 is South, increasing Eastwards. A left-right mirror image is in issshadow.ps

with the azimuth increasing from the left to the right. issshadowBW.ps

and issshadowBWAz.ps

are the printer-friendly black-on-white versions. (Created by the CMM

module issshadow 1.10.)

In a similar manner, the portions on the sky that are not reachable for a pair of station coordinates, because their delay does not match available VLTI DL positions, are shown in issgui.ps , issguiAz.ps , issguiBW.ps , and issguiBWAz.ps . To reduce the number of pages in these files, only station pairs with some inaccessible portion of the sky are included; all remaining combinations have full sky coverage with regard to the finite VLTI rail length. (Data are taken from the CMM module issgui 3.5.) Green horizontal lines indicate the minimum regular altitude of 30 degrees. A grid of small green numbers provides the delay at these directions in meters. The table with associated station coordinates and baseline lengths is in vltistations.html .

OIFITS

oiArray.fits , oiArray2.fits and oiArray3.fits are the Paranal telescope station array in OIFITS format. The difference between these files is explained in App. H of MIDI Optical Path Differences and Phases .

oiTargCharm2.fits is the CHARM2 star catalog of A&A 431 (2005) 773 in OIFITS format. This is a lossy format: Only the mandatory OIFITS columns have been rendered. The list is ordered according to RA (primary) and DEC (secondary) coordinates. The CHARM2 enumeration is in the TARGET_ID column of the binary table. Information not available in the CHARM2 catalog (VELTYP, VELDEF, some error bars) are rendered as NULL or blank strings.

VLTI (VINCI, AMBER, PRIMA) Publications

HTML and BibTeX Bibliographies: VINCI.html, VINCI.bib, AMBER.bib.

Documentation

The Enumerated Documents List

can be searched for the pattern "-157" to select the documents within the VLTI/PRIMA branch of the document tree. It is sorted numerically according to the 5-digit work package, then the 4-digit sequence number.

Miscellaneous

Software

Sky charts : Paranal (U,V,W) origin is at 70° 24' 17.953'' West, 24° 37' 38.782'' South.

External Documentation

absorb_R.pdf

and absorb_Q.pdf

are molecular absorption strengths from the HITRAN

and GEISA

databases plotted as a function of wavenumber in various atmospheric windows in the infrared.
lbsorb_R.pdf

and lbsorb_Q.pdf

are the same data on linear ordinate scales, for HITRAN only, and with lower resolution by summing over all lines in bins of constant abscissa width, then dividing through the width of the bin.
pwvNig.pdf

are plots of the precipitable water vapor above Paranal since 2004.