EVLA information

It has been really hard to find EVLA information like beam size, largest angular scale, sensitivity, etc. on the VLA pages because all of the google searches point to old VLA information. The most useful and recent EVLA information on beam size and largest angular scale is here

usetex failure in latex documents

When I use matplotlib's internal tex (rcParams['text.useTex']=False), the postscript files generated cause errors that look like this when you try to ps2pdf them:


ps2pdf h2co_pilot.ps
Error: /rangecheck in --get--
Operand stack:
--dict:20/25(ro)(L)-- --nostringval-- 71
Execution stack:
%interp_exit .runexec2 --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- 2 %stopped_push --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- false 1 %stopped_push 1862 1 3 %oparray_pop 1861 1 3 %oparray_pop 1845 1 3 %oparray_pop 1739 1 3 %oparray_pop --nostringval-- %errorexec_pop .runexec2 --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- 2 %stopped_push --nostringval-- %finish_show --nostringval-- --nostringval-- 9 6 0 --nostringval-- (pdf_text_enum_t) %op_show_continue --nostringval--
Dictionary stack:
--dict:1147/1684(ro)(G)-- --dict:0/20(G)-- --dict:70/200(L)-- --dict:116/300(L)-- --dict:44/200(L)-- --dict:25/42(L)--
Current allocation mode is local
Last OS error: 2
Current file position is 791626
GPL Ghostscript 8.64: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1
make: *** [h2co_pilot.pdf] Error 1


They will not open in MacOS's Preview.app either.

Solution: Make figures with rcParams['text.useTex'] = True

RATRAN on Mac OS X

Mac OS X doesn't like the defaults built in to RATRAN. It died unhappily with errors like:

ld_classic: can't locate file for: -lcrt0.o
and
ld: warning: in /usr/local/lib//libcfitsio.a, file is not of required architecture


In order to get it to run, I had to do the following:

1. Install CFITSIO with CFLAGS="-arch x86_64 -arch i386 -g -O2" to /usr/local/lib
   
2. Edit the sky/Makefile OPT variable (line 23) to read:
   OPT = -I. -O2 -fno-automatic -arch x86_64
   

Also, you need to set up system variables:

export RATRAN=/path/to/Ratran 
export RATRANRUN=/path/to/Ratran/run 

Gildas CLASS

It's absurdly difficult to find help on GILDAS Class, probably because you can't google "class" and most people probably don't label every piece of code with "GILDAS class".

Anyway, here are some scripts that I refer back to often:

file in August2009BGPS.dat
file out August2009fits.dat multiple
on error "file out August2009fits.dat"
say "READ IN FILES"
define character sourcelist*10[300]
accept sourcelist /column observed_sources.txt
on error "continue"
get 1001
set window -100 160
set mask -400 -100 160 400
set mode x -400 400
set align velocity
for i 1 to 161
say "Working on SOURCE "'i'
find /source 'sourcelist[i]' /telescope "CSO 4GHZ IF1" /offset 0 0 /quality 5
average
on error "@avplot2 'sourcelist[i]' 'i'; next"
base 3
line 0
min
plot
vis
write i
! on error "continue"
next


and


file in araya-2004.cls
find
define character filename*20
for i 1 to 20
say "Working on source "'i'
get next
let filename "araya-2004_"'i'".fits"
say "fits write "'filename'" /mode spectrum"
fits write 'filename' /mode spectrum
next

!file in araya-2002.cls
!find
!define character filename*20
!for i 1 to 42
! say "Working on source "'i'
! get i
! let filename "araya-2002_"'i'".fits"
! say "fits write "'filename'" /mode spectrum"
! fits write 'filename' /mode spectrum
!next


Montage wrapper

(I'm going to try to gradually shift my blogging to this one...)

I wrote a bash wrapper for Tom Robitaille's montage wrapper to allow fits wildcards.


#!/bin/bash

origdir=`pwd`

#echo $# $*

if [ $# -gt 0 ]
then
for ii in $*
do
if [ ${ii%=*} == 'header' ]
then
/usr/local/bin/montage/mGetHdr ${ii#*=} mosaic.hdr
elif [ ${ii%=*} == 'outfile' ]
then
outfile=${ii#*=}
elif [ `echo $ii | grep =` ]
then
params="$params,${ii%=*}='${ii#*=}'"
elif [ `echo $ii | grep ".fits"` ]
then
files=( ${files[@]} $ii )
fi
done
fi
echo ${files[@]} ${#files}
if [ ${#files} -gt 0 ]
then
mkdir tmp
cp ${files[@]} tmp/
cp mosaic.hdr tmp/
cd tmp/
fi

if [ -f mosaic.hdr ]
then
echo "mosaic.hdr exists, continuing"

dir=`pwd`
echo python -c "import montage; montage.wrappers.mosaic('$dir','$dir/mosaic',header='$dir/mosaic.hdr'$params)"
python -c "import montage; montage.wrappers.mosaic('$dir','$dir/mosaic',header='$dir/mosaic.hdr'$params)"

cd $origdir
if [ -d tmp ]
then
if [ $outfile ]
then
mv tmp/mosaic/mosaic.fits $outfile
else
mv tmp/mosaic mosaic
fi
rm -r tmp
fi

else
echo "mosaic.hdr does not exist. Quitting."
cd $origdir
fi



IRAF append/prepend/replace

IRAF has special syntax to append/replace, so you can do something like:
imarith *.fits - dark.fits ds_//*.fits
...though I can't remember right now how to do replacement etc.

command line & escape key

Problem: in both the bash command line and ipython, if I hit escape twice, I can never again do history-search-backwards (i.e. when you type part of a command and type "up" and reverse-search through your command history). Any idea how to fix this?