"New" SHOC

Introduction

This page contains additional information for the "new SHOC" aka "shocnwonder" that is now permanently mounted on the 74-inch as a secondary instrument via the 74-inch "Instrument Selector" so user should first familiarise themselves with the "Instrument Selector" wiki: wiki-link.

All the hardware for the new SHOC system is new but the underlying control software, GUI, service startup instructions, and data-folder structures etc. are identical to the old SHOC systems so user should also first familiarise themselves with the old SHOC wiki if they are not already regular SHOC users: wiki-link.

Specifications

• Camera: Andor iXon 888 #BV USB3 , 1024 × 1024px CCD, 13 μm pixels (CCD performance test sheet)
• Plate scale: 0.16 arcsec/px
• Field of view: 2.7' × 2.7' (the new system also has a focal reducer so the FoV-width is roughy double that of the old system)
• Filters:

  Filter Slide A: U,B,V,R,I

  Filter Slide B: Currently unpopulated but eventually will have u', g', r', i', z'

GUI and login details

GUI url (onsite or via VPN access only): http://shocnwonder.suth.saao.ac.za:5000/ OR http://shoc74in.suth.saao.ac.za:5000/

username: shoc74in

password: the regular "shoc74in" user password

Data access

There is an automated log being generated as files appear on disk by scraping the fits headers:

https://www.saao.ac.za/~sbp/74in_SHW_ObsLogs/

As with the old SHOC systems, data can be copied as follow:

• • Open a shell on your local PC (Putty if you're using Windows or a bash/tcsh/sh if on Mac or Linux)
  • Copy the data using the following command:

       rsync -avzP shoc74in@shoc74in.suth.saao.ac.za:"/data/74in/shw/<YYYY>/<MMDD>/*.fits" /LocalFilePath
         ---- the password is that for the shoc74in accounts

• NOTE 1: if the rsync command fails, try it WITHOUT the wildcard (*) and specify a specific file. Some rsync programs apparently do not support this function.
• NOTE 2: data is also backed-up at the end of the night and on a daily basis to the "astro2015" servers so data can also be accessed with the same folder structure from there.

A comparison between OLD vs. NEW system

Compariing raw unreduced images taken of the same field (07:13:27.974 -15:21:04.21) with similar camera settings for the NEW (left) and OLD (right) SHOC system on the 74-inch.