We used to recommend the data from the first observations of NGC1068 as an example data set. However, there have been so many changes to the way MIDI data looks by now, and recent versions of MIA+EWS are unable to reduce these old data sets without some (more or less) dirty tricks. This is not exactly the kind of data we want for a beginner's tutorial, therefore we recommend you find data from a bright calibrator and try to reduce it following the instructions. (If you don't have any MIDI data, then why are you reading this?)

• Make_MIDI_Log

  In a first step we want to look what files have beeen received. It's not easy to find tools reading binary fits-tables headers and thus MIA provides two methods. On the one hand a simple IDL procedure that is called make_midi_log. Just type at the IDL prompt

    make_midi_log,'<path>',LOGBOOK='<target>/filename.log'

  where <path> is the directory where the downloaded files are located. The parameter LOGBOOK specifies the output file. In the default version the procedure reads the keywords providing informations about the observed object, the observing mode, the filter, the shutter, the integration time, and the number of exposures.

• MIDIGUI

  Another way to get that informations is "Gorgonzola":

    files=midigui(dir='<path>')

  After a few seconds a window pops up and lists all MIDI-files in the specified directory (this screenshot has been reduced in size and readability):

   

  You might have noticed that the number of files is reduced from twelve to eight. "Gorgonzola" recognizes files that belong together in one dataset and displays only the first file. If you now select one or more files by marking them in the first column and pressing the "SELECT" button in the upper part of the panel the names of the files are written into the array files that was specified in the calling command of "Gorgonzola".
  To check what is stored in the variable files just type

    print,files

  or

    print,files[i]

  to print the files of dataset i.

  A more complete description of all the funny buttons in Gorgonzola can be found in Walter's UserGuide.

• MIDIGUIS

  A similar routine called with the command

    files=midiguis(dir='<path>')

  is prefered when handling large numbers of MIDI-files. After the user selected his files the routine writes a binary file to the directory <path>. In this file all the displayed informations are stored, i.e. next time you start midiguis within <path> the routine quickly reads this file instead of processing all the fits-headers again. Of course, this will not work if you don't have permission to write to the data directory.

• midifile_search

  If you know which data you want and are too impatient to wait for the GUI to come up, midifile_search can be used. For example, to find all the fringe-track and photometry files of NGC1068 in the current directory, type

    files=midifile_search("*.fits",OBJECT="ngc1068",/FTRACK,/PHOTOMETRY)

  A complete description of all the options is in the reference section.