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Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
28 ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993
The ESO­MIDAS Courier is published twice per year (January and July) by the ESO­MIDAS Group of the
European Southern Observatory.
Contributions as well as suggestions and comments are invited and can be sent to the editor. In particular,
authors of ESO­MIDAS application software that would be of general interest for the ESO­MIDAS community,
are invited to make this software available.
If you are not on the mailing list and want to receive future issues of the Courier, contact the editor. More
updated information about ESO­MIDAS can be obtained from the ESO­MIDAS Bulletin Board, accessible via
anonynous ftp.
The ESO­MIDAS TM Courier:
Editor: Rein H. Warmels
Typeset by FrameMaker TM
Published by the European Southern Observatory
Karl­Schwarzschild­Straúe 2,
D 8046 Garching bei MÝnchen,
Federal Republic of Germany
ISSN 1018­3051
The following MIDAS Support services are available
for sending suggestions, comments or to obtain help
when problems arise.
Telephone: +49­89­32006456
Telex: 5282822 eso d,
attn. ESO­MIDAS
Telefax: +49­89­3202362,
attn. ESO­MIDAS
Span: ESO::MIDAS
EARN: MIDAS@DGAESO51
Eunet: midas@eso.uucp
Internet: midas@eso.org
Anonymous ftp: ftphost.hq.eso.org (134.171.8.4)

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993 27
ESO­MIDAS Request Form
This is a request for the latest release of the ESO­MIDAS 1 system. To obtain a new release,
please complete this form and return it to us (see reverse). Material will be shipped only to users
with a valid ESO­MIDAS User Agreement. If you still have a tape or tape mailing box from the
last release, you MUST return these before we send the new release.
ESO­MIDAS User Agreement No 2 :
Technical Support Coordinator:
E­Mail:
Tape format:
Dcumentation requested:
Date: Signature:
1. ESO­MIDAS TM is copyright protected software developed by the European Southern Observatory for the pur­
pose of Image Processing of Astronomical Data.
2. for new user agreements t.b.d.
1600 bpi VAX/VMS backup
6250 bpi VAX/VMS backup
1600 bpi TAR format
6250 bpi TAR format
QIC­24 TAR format
Exabyte 8mm TAR format
DDS/DAT 4mm VAX/VMS backup
ftp (TAR files only)
DDS/DAT 4mm TAR format
ESO­MIDAS User Guide 92NOV
ESO­MIDAS Environment Version 1.1
IDI­routines
AGL Reference Manual Version 3.60

26 ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993
Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
Please return this form or notify us through electronic mail as soon as possible but not later than March 1, 1993, if
you would like to participate in the Data Analysis Workshop. For hotel requests, please use the accommodation
form.
Name:
Institute:
Address:
Telephone: E­mail :
I intend to participate in: Scientific sessions, April 26­27, only,
user meeting/special session, April 28, only
full workshop
I intend to present a Paper: or Poster
if yes, Title:
Abstract must be submitted
before March 1, 1993
Comments and suggestions:
To be returned to: Resy de Ruijsscher,
Attn.: 5 th Data Analysis Workshop,
European Southern Observatory,
Karl­Schwarzschild­Straúe 2,
D­W 8046 Garching, FRG.
Internet: daw@eso.org
EARN: daw@dgaeso51.bitnet
SPAN: ESO:DAW
ESO/ST­ECF Data Analysis Workshop
ESO, April 26­28, 1993

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993 25
First Announcement of the 5 th ESO/ST­ECF
Data Analysis Workshop
ESO, Karl­Schwarzschild­Straúe 2
D­W 8046 Garching, FRG
April 26­28, 1993
The aim of the Workshop is to provide a forum for discussions of astronomical software techniques and algorithms.
It is held annually during the spring (April/May) and centers on a different astronomical area each time. The Work­
shop will be held at the ESO headquarters where there is room for 100 participants only. We may therefore have to
reject some people and recommend you to register well before the deadline (1993­March­01) either through normal
mail or E­mail.
The topic for the 1993 Data Analysis Workshop is the analysis of direct imaging. The scientific section of the meet­
ing will consist of three sessions each starting with a main talk after which papers of approximately 10 minutes
duration can be presented. The last day is reserved for the MIDAS user's meeting and special sessions.
The tentative agenda is as follows
Analysis of Direct Imaging Data
We especially welcome contributions on algorithms and techniques for: time series analysis of non­equally sampled
data, calibration of photometry, and shapes of extended objects. We encourage people to present their work in these
areas even if they are only ideas. After each introductory talk, there will be a more informal discussion where such
contributions can be made. There will also be a poster session where people can present short contributions. The
special session on Graphical User Interfaces and Data Acquisition will also include instrument control and on­line
processing. Proceedings of the scientific sessions will be published.
The scientific organizing committee includes: P. GrosbÜl (Chairman) P. Benvenuti
D. Baade S. D'Odorico
R. H. Warmels
Contact address: Resy de Ruijsscher,
Attn.: 5 th Data Analysis Workshop,
European Southern Observatory,
Karl­Schwarzschild­Straúe 2,
D­W 8046 Garching, FRG.
E­mail: daw@eso.org (Internet)
April 26 : 14:00 ­ 18.00 Surface Photometry
April 27 : 09:00 ­ 12:30 Point Source Photometry
14:00 ­ 17:00 Time Series Analysis
17:00 ­ 18:00 European Fits Committee
April 28 : 09:00 ­ 12:30 MIDAS users' meeting
13:00 ­ 14:00 European FITS Committee
14:00 ­ 17:00 User Interfaces and Data Acquisition

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
24 ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993
/92NOV/libsrc/st/preinstall.com Open­VMS
/92NOV/libsrc/st/fsyalpha.mar Open­VMS
/92NOV/libsrc/st/fsyalphc.mar Open­VMS
/92NOV/libsrc/st/fsyalphd.mar Open­VMS
/92NOV/libsrc/st/fsyalphe.mar Open­VMS
/92NOV/libsrc/st/testvms.c Open­VMS
/92NOV/libsrc/agl/makefile Open­VMS
/92NOV/libsrc/agl/fintf.c Open­VMS
/92NOV/libsrc/agl/tkdrv.c bug fix for tektronix terminals/windows
/92NOV/contrib/pepsys/........ see text above
/92NOV/install/unix/test/testos.c better test of SYSV/BSD flag
/92NOV/install/unix/test/signal.c better test of void/int for signal()
/92NOV/install/unix/select.sh minor sintax error corrected
/92NOV/install/unix/setup.sh using ``ex'' instead of ``ed'' as editor
/92NOV/install/unix/ed_moptions.sh using ``ex'' instead of ``ed'' as editor
/92NOV/install/unix/install1.sh correction about executable pathnames
/92NOV/install/vms/preinstallmidas.cnf Open­VMS
/92NOV/install/vms/make_vms.sh Open­VMS
/92NOV/incl/ftoc_vms.h Open­VMS
/92NOV/incl/ok.h Open­VMS
/92NOV/monit/prepf.c fix HELP/QUALIFY
/92NOV/monit/preph.c minor bug fix
/92NOV/system/idiserv/x11/Xtest.c clean up FONT handling
/92NOV/system/idiserv/x11/textdemo.c dito
/92NOV/system/idiserv/x11/fontsup.c dito
/92NOV/system/machine/computer.c Open­VMS
/92NOV/prim/proc/dazinit.prg handle colours in companion mode
/92NOV/libsrc/st/midkeya.c change double key. format in READ/KEY
/92NOV/prim/display/src/magni.for initiliaze drawing variables
/92NOV/prim/plot/src/oversym.for resetting of font scaling
file fix

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993 23
The following text contains the current (dated 29 January 1993) information about the patch file
P92NOV.01 that can be obtained by anonymous ftp (from 134.171.8.4). Please refer to the ESO­MIDAS
Courier Volume 2, Number 1 for a detailed description.
Archive­name: P92NOV.01
Submitted­by: cguirao@eso.hq.org (Carlos Guirao)
This is patch 01 for MIDAS 92NOV
Please apply it by:%cd $MIDASHOME (e.g. /midas)
% patch ­N ­p < P92NOV.01
Note: ``patch'' is public domain software that can be very easily installed in any UNIX machine. There is
a compressed tar file called pub/patch.tar.Z availableon our anonymous ``ftp'' account in
``ftphost.hq.eso.org'' (134.171.8.4). Follow README for installation details.
Note: This patch file should be applied on the original release MIDAS 92NOV. If you have already mod­
ified files by hand, the command ``patch'' could fail, leaving the file partially or completely unpatched. A
correct execution should print only ``Hunk'' messages like:
Hunk # succeeded at
Note: After applying all the patches, you will have to run the update MIDAS procedure, for the modi­
fications to take effect:
% cd $MIDASHOME/92NOV
% ./config
.................
Select: 7 (update MIDAS)
Do you want to continue [yn]? (y): y
.................
Select: q (quit config)
Below a listing (complete up to 29 January 1993) of the patched files is given. As can be seen a large
fraction of the patches are done for Open­VMS.
For the context PEPSYS several patches have been made in order to use a better algorithm for selecting
stars. Other fixed are made to improve covergae in the West at the start of the night, and in the East at the
end, on­line help, and to solve portability problems. A preliminary version of the reduction program is
also included.
The P92NOV.01 patch file includes:
file fix
/92NOV/prim/proc/report.prg test for missing editor specs.
/92NOV/prim/display/src/smooth.for fix FILTER/DIGITAL with large frames
/92NOV/prim/plot/libsrc/plogo.for correct array boundaries
/92NOV/prim/plot/libsrc/plopn.for fix call of AGIGET
/92NOV/prim/tc3/libsrc/cc.c Open­VMS
/92NOV/prim/tw3/libsrc/tfpic.c Open­VMS
/92NOV/libsrc/idi/cidi/x11/idilocal1.c correct test for GrayScale terminal
/92NOV/libsrc/os/vms/osx.c Open­VMS
/92NOV/libsrc/st/makefile Open­VMS
The MIDAS Patch File Summary
(from the anonymous ftp account)

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
22 ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993
writing to tape, OUTTAPE will now start at the current tape position and NOT rewind by default. A new rewind flag has been
added (i.e. `flags=R') which will force a rewind before writing.
Modified Julian Date ­ PJG 920903 The IAU standard definition of Modified Julian Date as MJD = JD ­ 2400000.5 was adopted
(in previous releases the constant 2400000.0 was used). This change affects the commands: COMPUTE/UT, COMPUTE/ST,
COMPUTE/AIRMASS and COMPUTE/BARY.
Eastern Longitudes ­ PJG 920903 The IAU standard definition of Longitude as EASTERN longitude was adopted i.e. La Silla
long. = ­70:43:55.35. (in previous releases western longitudes were used). This change affects the commands: COMPUTE/UT,
COMPUTE/ST, COMPUTE/AIRMASS and COMPUTE/BARY.
RESTORE/NAME ­ KB 920924 New command RESTORE/NAME (to rename files a la `data0004.bdf' to their original name
as stored in descr. FILENAME) has been implemented. See the HELP for details.
FFT/... ­ KB 921026 The restriction to frames with dimensions equal to powers of 2 has been removed from the FFT commands.
Also the SPFFT commands (single precision FFT) have been removed, since tests have shown, that no significant speedup could
be achieved to offset the loss in precision. Please, check your private procedures and update if needed.
REPORT/PROBLEM ­ KB 921027 Now, this command uses the text editor specified via the ``SET/MIDAS editor=...'' com­
mand (defaulted to `vi' (Unix) or `EDT' (VMS)) to build up your error report. You also can use an already existing text file
instead of editing a report. See the help for details.
Context IMRES ­ RH 921101 New context IMRES has been added by R. Hook (ST­ECF) to implement methods based on L.
Lucy's algorithm for image restoration.
Version of BDFs ­ KB 921101 From Nov. 1992 on, the characters string representing the internal version of MIDAS images,
tables, etc. has been changed to VERS_006.

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993 21
the command line ­ minimum match is used. E.g. if in procedure blabla.prg: CROSSREF MINIMUM WEIGHT METHOD
then Midas > @a blabla meth=minmax wei=2.2 min=0.7 would be o.k.
Host commands ($, $$) ­ KB 920715 Sometimes it is necessary to pass a command line ``as it is'' to the host operating system
(normally MIDAS does expansions + substitutions before passing the line to the host system). In that case, use `$$' instead of
`$' ­ see the help for details.
Context OPTOPUS ­ RHW 920717 The default format file for the OPTOPUS input table (command CREATE/OPTOPUS) has
been changed to allow for more flexibility in the object names. The old format table is still available and can be found in the
include directory of the OPTOPUS package (see your MIDAS site manager). Also, modifications have been done to remove the
problems with objects and plate centre around 0 hours RA. Finally, thanks to Dario Maccagni, a nice tutorial is available now.
VIEW/IMAGE ­ KB 920720 Quite a lot of new features have been added to this command according to the suggestions
received from users. Also the syntax of VIEW/IMAGE has changed! See the help for details.
LOAD/IMAGE ­ KB 920722 The default calculation of the cut values has been changed from MIN, MAX to MEAN +­
3*SIGMA of the frame. Also the parameter `cutvals' has been upgraded so you can choose different methods for the cut value
calculation. See the help for details.
MIDAS command language ­ KB 920723 The buffer space for Midas procedures is now adjusted dynamically, so there is no
more fixed limit for the size of Midas procedures.
PRINT/TAB ­ MP 920723 A new parameter has been added to define the number of characters per line in the output file/device.
See the help for more details.
Context SPEC ­ New command MERGE/SPECTRUM ­ PB 920820 This command allows to merge two 1D spectra and takes
care of the overlapped parts of the spectra. Both spectra must be previously flux calibrated. The weight function is a ramp
between 0. and 1. There is a possibility to cut the edges of the spectra.
Context SPEC ­ New command PLOT/RESIDUAL ­ PB 920820 This command plots in the graphic window the columns
:RESIDUAL versus :WAVE of the wavelength calibration table line.tbl
Context SPEC ­ New command CORRELATE/LINE ­ PB 920820 Compares the position of arc lines in two tables created by
SEARCH/LINE and estimates the shift by cross­correlation. This is used in contexts spec, long and echelle in the guess option.
Context SPEC ­ Command REBIN/WAVE ­ PB 920820 The command REBIN/WAVE accepts a parameter [start,step,npix]
instead of a reference frame name to specify the output format. The coefficents of the rebinning are now read by default from the
table line.tbl.
Contexts LONG and SPEC ­ Parameter tolerance in IDENTIFY/... ­ PB 920820 Commands IDENTIFY/LINE, IDENTIFY/
LONG, IDENTIFY/RBR involve an additional parameter tol (Tolerance) which controls the limit of the search window which
associates the pointed position to the table element.
Contexts LONG and SPEC ­ Table LINE.tbl renamed ­ PB 920820 The default name LINE.tbl of the wavelength calibration
table has been changed to line.tbl, in accordance with the echelle package.
Contexts LONG and SPEC ­ Double precision columns ­ PB 920820 All wavelength related columns in the table line.tbl are
now of type R*8. The column :WAVE of the line catalogue should in principle be of the same type.
Contexts LONG and SPEC ­ SEARCH/LINE in world coordinates ­ PB 920820 The table line.tbl generated by command
SEARCH/LINE now works in world coordinates, so that the positions of lines in columns :X and :Y take into account the start
and step values of the input image.
Contexts LONG and SPEC ­ Tolerance in wavelength units ­ PB 920820 The calibration tolerance in commands CALI­
BRATE/RBR and CALIBRATE/LINE can be given in pixels (as before), or in wavelength units, if preceded by a minus sign.
Context LONG ­ New commands SET/LONG and HELP/LONG ­ PB 920820 The command SET/LONG enables to assign
values to keywords of the context long. The command HELP/LONG provides information about the keywords.
Context ECHELLE ­ New command DISPLAY/ECHELLE ­ PB 920820 This command takes care of all preliminary steps
required before displaying an image, like creating a display window, the look­up table, a.s.o.
Context ECHELLE ­ Command ROTATE/ECHELLE ­ PB 920820 An additional parameter is available in command
ROTATE/ECHELLE which provides the default value of the observation time if this value is not present in descriptor
O_TIME(7). If no default value is provided, the user will be prompted to enter the observation time.
Context ECHELLE ­ Command DEFINE/HOUGH ­ PB 920820 a) The order following threshold can be specified independ­
ently for each order by direct assignment in the intermediate table middummr.tbl. The threshold is still estimated automatically if
no value is proposed. b) A method CENTER enables to perform the Hough transform only in the central part of the order refer­
ence frame. This feature is useful for strongly curved orders. c) A minus sign (­) preceding the name of the method avoids the
initial median filtering of the frame. d) An order number verification is performed which renumbers the orders after verification.
Context ECHELLE ­ Command IDENTIFY/ECHELLE ­ PB 920820 a) A new method (TWO­D) is available for the wave­
length calibration. This method fits from the start a bivariate polynomial to the identified lines. Method TWO­D must be used
when the disperser is not a grating, which is the case with EFOSC. b) A diagnosis tool has been implemented in methods PAIR
and ANGLE, which analyses input parameters and identifications in the case the initial echelle relation is not accurate enough to
start the identifications. The diagnosis proposes replacement values to make the echelle relation more accurate. c) A cross­cor­
relation analysis is performed in mode GUESS to estimate the shift between two wavelength calibration exposures and correct
accordingly the dispersion coefficients of the reference guess session.
INTAPE/FITS ­ PJG 920903 The FITS reader was upgraded to decode the new FITS extensions proposed, namely: Binary
Tables (BINTABLE) and Image (IMAGE) extensions.
OUTTAPE/FITS ­ PJG 920903 The defaults of MIDAS FITS writer (OUTTAPE) have been changed. Tables will now be writ­
ten as Binary Table Extensions by default. ASCII tables can be generated by using the `type=B' option for Basic FITS. When

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
20 ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993
SET/GRAPHICS, SHOW/PLOT is SHOW/GRAPH, etc. The .../PLOT will be kept in the system for a while; however, users are
advised to change to the new names.
SORT/TABLE ­ MP 920313 The algorithm has been modified in order to be able to deal with big tables (of the order of 50 MB)
SET/GRAPHICS ­ RHW 920316 After the upgrade of the ASTRONET GRAPHIC LIBRARY by Luca Fini also the MIDAS
graphic package was given a major facelift. A number of new features have been implemented and are available via the SET/
GRAPH command. For a full description see the help of SET/GRAPHICS (SET/PLOT). A summary of the main new features
is: CLEAR=on/off ­ clear the graphics before starting a new PLOT; BCOLOUR=number ­ set the background colour; XOFF­
SET=number ­ position the plot in x; YOFFSET= number ­ position the plot in y; XSCALE=number ­ scale of the plot in x
YSCALE=number ­ scale of the plot in y; FONT= number ­ set the font type to be used; The plot mode 3 (PMODE=3) has been
taken out. To obtain a nice character font one should now use the FONT option. The syntax of the options XFORMAT and
YFORMAT has been changed slightly.
PLOT/... ­ RHW 920316 In all PLOT commands a x­ and y­offset parameter has been added. This allows you to position the
plot anywhere on the graphics window/device. The offsets are added to the scaling parameters in the command parameter list.
Also, as already has been mentioned in the previous news paragraph, a CLEAR option in the SET/GRAPHIC command allows
you to switch off the automatic erase at the beginning of each PLOT command. Hence, you can now more easily produce multi­
ple plots, using the main plot commands with the proper scale and offset parameters.
@% ­ KB 920317 Just for insiders... the % command for executing `compiled' procedures has been changed to @%.
CREATE/xCAT ­ KB 920317 The syntax for using frames from a non­active catalogue has been changed to #xyz_catalog, e.g.
#21_special, to use frame with entry no. 21 in catalogue special.cat .
COPY/TABLE ­ MP 920319 A new option has been added to the command to give to possibility to convert a table from/to
Transposed/Record mode
FILTER/COSMIC ­ MP 920320 The command has been updated in order to deal with images containing a lot of spikes.
AVERAGE/IMAGES ­ KB 920327 This command has been redesigned and basically rewritten. It now offers functionality sim­
ilar to AVERAGE/WINDOW with the following `goodies' added: Lots of different options for getting an average value are pro­
vided, it works on frames of any size and these frames do not have to have perfect overlap.
COPY/DIMA, ID ­ KB 920409 The ``old'' copy commands COPY/DI, COPY/ID for copying descriptors to images and vice
versa have been reinstalled as COPY/DIMA (because of COPY/DISPLAY) and COPY/ID. See the help for details.
WRITE/OUT ­ KB 920413 The char. `\' in the WRITE/OUT command is NOT converted anymore to a blank, since you can
have embedded blanks by enclosing the text in double quotes. Check your private procedures if you have to modify them.
CENTER/GAUSS ­ MP 920415 The algorithm used by this command has been updated in order to provide more stability. The
command is now able to deal with undersampled images.
FIT/... ­ MP 920415 The package has been heavily tested and should now work correctly on 2­d images and tables. A new func­
tion MOFFAT has been added.
ASSIGN/GRAPHIC, COPY/GRAPHIC ­ RHW 920504 All postscript printers offer the possibility to print in portrait or in
landscape mode. In order to get the desired format one has to extend the printer name with ``.l'' for landscape or ``.p'' for portrait
mode. Default (no extension given) is landscape mode.
INQUIRE/KEYWORD ­ KB 920505 A `flush option' has been added as 3rd parameter to inhibit the possibility of type­ahead.
INFO/DESCR ­ KB 920511 A new command INFO/DESCRIPTOR has been implemented. See the HELP for details.
SET/GRAPHIC ­ RHW 920520 A new option (what another one??) has been included in the graphics setting. With the TSIZE
(text size) one can size the text characters. Default is 1.0. The SSIZE option now only takes care of the character sizing. Read the
help.
SET/MIDAS_SYSTEM ­ KB 920529 Several new options have been added to the command. These are mainly things which
you could already do before by knowing which specific keyword to set. These were more or less undocumented features, not
guaranteed to be stable forever. So, please, use now the relevant options in SET/MIDAS_SYSTEM instead.
OPEN, CLOSE, READ, WRITE/FILE ­ KB 920601 New commands for handling ASCII files in MIDAS procedures have
been added. See the help for details.
CUTS/IMAGE ­ KB 920602 The functionality of this command has been expanded, see the help for details.
CREATE/TABLE ­ MP 920605 It is possible now to specify in the format file the field separator(s) which are used in the ascii
file from which you want to create a table. When this keyword is present, the position of the fields in the ascii file are not
required. See the help for more info
COMPUTE/TABLE ­ MP 920605 A new version of COMPUTE/TABLE has been implemented: ­ It gives error messages (for
instance when the input column doesn't exist) ­ It is 3 times faster than the old version ­ new functions have been implemented
(MIN, MAX, MOD, logical functions) ­ It doesn't allocate any temporary file on disk any longer
SELECT/TABLE ­ MP 920605 A new version of SELECT/TABLE has been implemented: ­ It gives error messages (for
instance when the input column doesn't exist) ­ It is 3 times faster than the old version ­ New functions have been implemented
for the treatment of character columns i.e support of wild cards ­ It doesn't allocate any temporary file on disk any longer
MVA context ­ MP 920609 Many of the commands were not working on the VMS system. The bug has been corrected.
STATISTICS/IMAGE ­ KB 920713 This command has been significantly modified: 1) If working on subframes only the rele­
vant area is mapped, for large frames only chunks of the frames are mapped and worked on in a loop => STAT/IMA now works
for images of any size,2) a new option PLANE has been added to work on the planes of a 3­dim image in sequence, see the
HELP for details,3) layout of output keys and output descriptors has NOT been changed...,4) bugs with calculations using excess
bins have been fixed,5) the first mode was actually the second mode in some cases... this also has been fixed
CROSSREF ­ KB 920714 Labels for parameters which are defined via the CROSSREF command may now be abbreviated on

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993 19
The MIDAS 92NOV News File
The following text contains a detailed summary of revisions and changes in the MIDAS application soft­
ware during the period between the previous 91NOV and the new 92NOV release. MIDAS users can pro­
duce this text with the MIDAS HELP [NEWS] command.
SHOW/DESCR ­ KB 911205 A 3rd parameter has been added to the command SHOW/DESCR ­ see the HELP for details.
editing of descriptors ­ KB 911205 Now you can edit descriptors via `vi' or `Emacs' or... by using the application procedure
`dscedit.prg'. Use `HELP/APP dscedit' to get more info about that procedure. Choosing your favourite text editor is done via the
command SET/MIDAS_SYS.
multiple displays ­ KB 911220 You now have the possibility to open display windows on different X­terminals and/or XWork­
stations. You must have access right to the other machines, e.g. an account there, and you or somebody else must have already
``opened'' the display, i.e. logged in. For details see the help of CREATE/DISPLAY and CREATE/GRAPHICS.
perspective view ­ KB 920103 An application procedure `perspec.prg' has been added for displaying a perspective view of
selected planes of a 3­dim frame. Use HELP/APPL for details.
Midas setup ­ KB 920107 The application procedure `showmidas.prg' has been added for displaying the current setup within
Midas, e.g. plot device, logging status, etc.
REBIN/LINEAR ­ KB 920114 The rebinning has been updated to finally take into account that the world coordinate value of a
pixel refers to the center of that pixel. Also, all pixels in the result frame outside the original frame are set to the value stored in
keyword NULL(2).
Checking the termination status of applications ­ KB 920115 The layout of the keyword APPLIC has been modified to make
it possible to check if the program has terminated correctly or not. Use HELP/KEY APPLIC for details.
FLIP/IMAGE ­ KB 920115 The option D ­ flipping around main diagonal, has been removed. Instead, use the command
TRANSPOSE/IMAGE.
COPY ­ KB 920116 New commands COPY/LSDK, COPY/LSKD, COPY/LSDD have been added to copy lists of descriptors/
keywords. See the help for details.
CREATE/AUX_WINDOW ­ KB 920117 New command CREATE/AUX_WINDOW has been added to create an auxiliary
zoom window. See the help for details. Accordingly, the window size parameters in the commands GET/CURSOR and VIEW/
IMAGE have been removed.
VIEW/IMAGE ­ KB 920117 Now you can also do column plots and contour plots inside VIEW/IMAGE.
COPY/GRAPHICS ­ RHW 920122 This new command has been created to improve the naming convention of MIDAS com­
mands (see COPY/DISPLAY). It does the same as the SEND/PLOT command, which will be removed in the future.
Dynamic expansion of command data base ­ KB 920204 Now it is possible to increase the number of commands and/or qual­
ifiers used in MIDAS via the command SET/MIDAS_SYSTEM. See the help for details.
COPY/TABLE ­ MP 922901 The command works correctly now on big tables. (it was giving problems if the input table was
big and contained selected entries)
FIT/ELL2 ­ RHW 920217 Yet another method to fit ellipses. The command is available in the `surfphot' context (set/context
surfphot). Read the help to get the details.
long command lines ­ KB 920217 There exist some ``big'' MIDAS commands, like PLOT/AXES, which may not fit on a single
MIDAS command line. These commands are also difficult to edit and are usually truncated in the command buffer. To handle
these long commands one can now proceed in 2 parts: First, each command line with a `+' as the first character is just stored in
the command buffer and NOT executed, but may be edited in the usual way. So, one should enter very long MIDAS commands
as 2 separate lines with the `+' as the first character in the command buffer. Then, in order to combine these two lines and exe­
cute as one command, use `n+m' where `n' the command no. of the first line and `m' the command no. of the second line, e.g.
7+6. Note, that only two lines may be combined.
MIDAS command line ­ KB 920218 The max. size of the command line in MIDAS has been increased to 256 chars. (from 160
chars. in the 91NOV release).
GROW/IMAGE ­ KB 920220 An option has been added to allow choice of replicating the base line as lines or columns of
result frame. See the help for details.
MAGNITUDE/... ­ KB 920228 All MAGNITUDE commands have now a zoom_window option like the GET/CURSOR com­
mand (with all the added functionality) for selection of subimages. See the help for details.
CENTER/... ­ KB 920304 The CENTER commands have now a zoom_window option like the GET/CURSOR command (with
all the added functionality) for selection of subimages. Also, the qualifier UGAUSS has been removed. See the help for details.
Dynamic expansion of keyword data base ­ KB 920310 Now it is possible to increase the number of global/local keywords.
See the help of the command SET/MIDAS_SYSTEM for details.
.../PLOT ­ RHW 920312 In order to reduce the confusion between graphics commands with qualifier PLOT and those with
qualifier GRAPHICS, all plot commands with PLOT as a qualifier now have the qualifier GRAPHICS. Hence SET/PLOT is now
(with minor modifications and additions)

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
18 ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993
1 st ESO­MIDAS Summer School
ESO, Karl­Schwarzschild­Straúe 2
D­W 8046 Garching, FRG
September 6­11, 1993
MIDAS is a software package for the reduction of astronomical data with particular emphasis on supporting all
instruments available on the La Silla Observatory, and in the future also of the VLT. The resulting diversity of
MIDAS utilities is thus considerable. At the same time, preserving the high quality of data obtained with modern
instruments requires that the data reducer is very familiar with the tools he is applying and is able to write his
own applications to extract special quantities in an optimal way. The aim of the school, with lectures and exer­
cises, is to provide the students with a general knowledge of the available tools and to gain experience in writing
applications within the MIDAS environment. The course includes a) standard reduction of astronomical data; b)
writing procedures using the MIDAS command language; c) writing FORTRAN programs using the standard
interfaces to the different MIDAS data structures. Practical exercises will be carried out in groups of two or three
students on UNIX workstations.
The school is primarily intended for students working on a PhD thesis in astronomy. A basic knowledge of the
ESO­MIDAS system and of FORTRAN programming is required.
Applications forms can be obtained from the Image Processing Group and have to be received by June 1st,
1993. The number of participants is limited to 15. The school will support the local living expenses.
Contact address: Resy de Ruijsscher,
Attn.: 1 st ESO­MIDAS Summer School,
European Southern Observatory,
Karl­Schwarzschild­Straúe 2,
D­W 8046 Garching, FRG.
E­mail: midas@eso.org (Internet)
tions done on a command line use ECHO/FULL
instead. Here we have to talk a little bit about the
procedure levels in MIDAS. Working interac­
tively is considered to be working at procedure
level 0. Executing a procedure increases the pro­
cedure level by one. If that procedure executes
(calls) another procedure the procedure level is
increased again, and so on up to 10 levels. The
ECHO commands (and also the DEBUG/MOD­
ULE command) may work on all or only selected
procedure levels. This way you can control
exactly how much output you get (since most
MIDAS commands are actually implemented as
procedures you might be surprised by the amount
of lines displayed on your screen when you do an
ECHO/FULL on all levels...). If these simple
approaches don't work you have to switch to the
debugging mode for MIDAS procedures via the
command DEBUG/PROCEDURE. After that, exe­
cute the procedure again, and it will start up with
the debugger for the MIDAS Command Lan­
guage; this is indicated by the prompt Mdb. In the
beginning you will be in stepwise execution
mode, i.e. each line of the procedure is displayed
and only executed after you hit RETURN. Type
`h' (without the quotes!) to get a list of all avail­
able debugging commands. You switch from step­
wise to continuous execution mode via `g'. For
that mode you can set breakpoints, show the
breakpoints or cancel any of them. The command
r keyname displays the contents of keyword
keyname. This is an important tool, because
local keywords of a procedure are deleted once the
procedure terminates, they cannot be inspected
otherwise.
Again, the command DEBUG/PROCEDURE may
work on specific procedure levels only, to stream­
line the debugging process.
For further details see Chapter 3.8 of the MIDAS
Users Guide.

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993 17
In this issue we try to answer some of the ques­
tions we received concerning the debugging of
MIDAS procedures and application programs.
Problem: I have a MIDAS procedure which runs
my new, exciting application written in the
MIDAS environment. When I execute the proce­
dure, I get a message like ``segmentation
violation ­ core dumped''. However, if
I try the same procedure on another computer (dif­
ferent vendor) in our network the procedure termi­
nates without any error message but the
application still does not do any of the foreseen
tasks.
Answer: This looks like your application crashed.
In the VMS environment you always get a more
or less explanatory error message if a program
dies, but for Unix the story is different. Depending
on the host system you might get an error message
similar to the one mentioned above or nothing at
all (e.g. on the HP RISC machines). The first step
should always be to turn on the verbose execution
mode for MIDAS procedures via the command
ECHO/ON. That lets you see which path in the
procedure is taken and if your application is
started at all.
If you are working on one of those ``silent'' sys­
tems check if a file named core has been created
in your directory, indicating that your application
aborted and a core dump was done.
So, now you have to debug your application and
there are several possibilities. First, you might just
have a careful look at your code again and taking
the risk of being considered ready for retirement I
confess a liking for the good old program listing
(no scrolling around needed there...). Explaining
the logic of your program to a colleague also
works great. Another (brute force) approach is to
insert WRITE or printf statements (in FORTRAN
or C) into the code displaying the values of pro­
gramming variables at various steps in order to
localize the erroneous code segment. If all that
does not help, you have to get out the big guns and
use a debugger. Since MIDAS applications are
written in standard programming languages, you
can use straight away the standard debuggers
which are available on your system.
So, now you have to recompile and relink your
application with the debug option:
On a VMS system, you recompile via FORTRAN/
DEBUG/NOOPT test.for or CC/DEBUG/
NOOPT test.c for a FORTRAN application
test.for or a C application test.c. Relink
via LINK/DEBUG test,MID_DISK:[`MI­
DASHOME'.`MIDVERS'.LIB]midaslib/L
to obtain an executable module test.exe.
For a Unix system, remember that for a FOR­
TRAN application you first have to use the ESO
preprocessor to create a standard FORTRAN file
test.f. Recompile the application via f77
­g ­c test.f or cc ­g ­c test.c and
relink it via f77 test.o $MIDASHOME/
$MIDVERS/lib/midaslib.a ­o test.­
exe or cc test.o $MIDASHOME/$MID­
VERS/lib/midaslib.a ­o test.exe.
For further details as well as examples see chapter
5.6 of the MIDAS Environment document, rev.
1.1 (Nov. 1992).
Once your executable module is ready, switch to
the debugging mode for applications running in
MIDAS via the command DEBUG/MODULE.
After that, execute the procedure again, and your
application will be started with the debugger. You
can now debug your code according to the instruc­
tions of the relevant debugger manual of your sys­
tem. In VMS there is only one debugger, but
different debuggers exist for different Unix sys­
tems, e.g. dbx, sdb, xdb and the correct
debugger name has to be stored in a system key­
word at the installation of MIDAS.
Problem: My application runs o.k., but the
MIDAS procedure where this application is
embedded in crashes with some obscure message.
Answer: Several commands and tools are pro­
vided to help you in checking out a MIDAS pro­
cedure:
First, as already indicated above, use ECHO/ON to
display each line of the procedure as it is exe­
cuted. In order to see also all the symbol substitu­
MIDAS Questions and Answers
The MIDAS Group, European Southern Observatory

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
16 ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993
STSEPI (SCSEPI) called in the end by MIDAS
applications puts the keywords from the program
data space back into that file. Therefore, the
binary keyword file is not updated when you inter­
rupt an application via CTRL­C, or if the applica­
tion doesn't terminate via a call to STSEPI. By
the way, the first character of the keyword
APPLIC indicates if an application aborted or ter­
minated normally; see HELP/KEY APPLIC for
details.
Except for creation and deletion, keywords may
be manipulated via MIDAS commands directly, as
well as via the STandard interfaces called from
application programs. To safeguard the integrity
of MIDAS, applications can neither create nor
delete keywords. The commands WRITE/KEY­
WORD and DELETE/KEYWORD must be used for
that, instead. However, unlike descriptors, the
MIDAS keywords cannot be expanded after they
have been created with a given size 1 . Reading and
writing of keywords is done by the commands
READ/KEYWORD and WRITE/KEYWORD.
SHOW/KEYWORD displays the internal layout of a
keyword. COPY/KEYWORD copies the contents
of one keyword to another, whereas COPY/KD
and COPY/DK copy keywords to and from
descriptors. By the way, these COPY commands,
together with the application procedure
dscedit.prg give you the possibility to also
edit keywords with your favourite text editor. This
editor is initialized to vi (just to show you how
down to earth we can be...) but can be changed to
your taste via the SET/MIDAS_SYSTEM com­
mand.
COPY/KT copies keyword data to tables and
COPY/KI copies keyword data to a newly created
image. As for descriptors, the command PRINT/
KEYWORD prints the contents of a keyword or
stores them in an ASCII file. With PLOT/KEY­
WORD and OVERPLOT/KEYWORD you plot key­
word data.
Keywords play a very important role in the
MIDAS command language, where they serve a
purpose similar to the variables in a programming
language like FORTRAN. They may be used as
global variables (created and updated via
WRITE/KEYWORD) or local variables (created
1. see ``Expedition'' in the last MIDAS Courier,
Volume 2, Number 1, June 1992
via DEFINE/LOCAL and updated via WRITE/
KEYWORD) inside MIDAS procedures. Global
keywords are known to all applications and proce­
dures executing in MIDAS. For example, all the
keywords specified in the syskeys.dat file
are global keywords. Local keywords are accessi­
ble only in the procedure where they are created
and all procedures which are called from this pro­
cedure (and the applications executed inside these
procedures). In case of name conflicts of global
and local keywords the local keywords take prece­
dence. Thus, if a local character keyword with
name OUTPUTI is defined in a MIDAS proce­
dure, then inside this procedure the local character
keyword will be accessed and outside the proce­
dure the global integer keyword OUTPUTI will
be used.
Besides providing the usual arithmetic operations
on keywords, the command COMPUTE/KEY­
WORD offers a rich set of functions to support pro­
gramming in the MIDAS command language.
Thus, for example, there are functions to test if a
MIDAS frame or descriptor exists, to get the cur­
rent time, or to obtain the values of Unix variables
or VMS symbols (HELP COMPUTE/KEY gives
the complete list...).
Finally, the command LOCK/KEYWORD will put a
write­lock on keywords, so you can ensure that
essential keywords are not accidentally overwrit­
ten.
The number of global and local keywords is fixed
initially to 248 and 120, respectively, but can be
expanded to m global, n local keywords via the
command SET/MIDAS_SYSTEM keywords=
m,n. To display the current values use SET/
MIDAS_SYSTEM keywords=? or SHOW/
KEYWORD ?+, which displays the relevant key­
word information in more detail.
For additional information we recommend the fol­
lowing documents (beware, this may not be the
most thrilling bedtime reading...) available from
the IPG: ``The MIDAS Environment'', rev. 1.1,
November 1992 - for a complete description of
the STandard­interfaces in FORTRAN and C of
MIDAS.; ``The MIDAS User Guide'', Volume A,
Chapter 3 - for a detailed discussion of local key­
words and the MIDAS command language.

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993 15
ware tools used by SERC scientists to analyse
IUE data. At GSFC, a Regional Data Analysis
Facility has been set up to provide researchers
with general purpose software as well as
IUE­specific functions. This software, available
under IDL, together with the associated cata­
logues and databases, allows the off­line analysis
of IUE observations.
In Villafranca most of the access to the archive is
done via the Uniform Low Dispersion Archive
(ULDA), which contains more than 44,000 low­­
dispersion spectra. Nineteen National Hosts have
been established, each serving the needs of its
own country. Astronomers within a country access
their host, using the national networks to run the
query and select program (USSP) and downlink
the selected data­generating spectral files in
ASCII, FITS or MIDAS format..
Within the scope of the Final Archive, several util­
ities are being implemented as a ``context'' inside
MIDAS. The first of these commands reads IUE
tapes in GO format and converts them into
MIDAS. The command is available as a com­
pressed tar file (circa 57 Kbytes) that includes
source code and installation procedure for MIDAS
91NOV or later versions. A copy of this file can
be obtained via ftp from the SPAN node VIL­
SPA:: (28843), username anonymous, pass­
word user. The file is copied in image mode
as get iue.tar_z iue.tar.Z
An ftp account on Internet, to allow a wider
distribution of this software, will be available in
the near future.
Expeditions in the MIDAS Jungle: Keywords
Klaus Banse, European Southern Observatory
After the previous expeditions to the HELP sys­
tem and the internal structures of images and their
descriptors, it is time to discover the less obvious
details of the MIDAS keywords (some people like
to associate that with a swamp ...).
The keywords in MIDAS serve as variables in the
MIDAS Command Language, and are used to
pass information from one MIDAS application to
the next or the MIDAS monitor. Thus, the key­
words act as the ``glue'' among different applica­
tions and the Monitor.
Keywords are identified by their name (max. 8
characters, first character not a digit and no dis­
tinction between lower and upper case), a type and
the number of elements. Currently, the supported
keyword types are: real, integer, character and
double precision. Keywords may represent single
values or arrays. The theoretical maximum size is
32767 elements; however, for such large data sets,
images or tables would be more efficient data
structures in MIDAS.
Initially, the keywords are stored in an ASCII file
named syskeys.dat in the directory
$MIDASHOME/$MIDVERS/monit (in UNIX
parlance). The keywords specified in this file are
either reserved keywords or standard user key­
words. The reserved keywords are used to hold
system parameters and must not be changed by
the user explicitly. The standard user keywords
are default keywords for input/output to/from
MIDAS applications, like e.g. IN_A, OUT_A for
input, output frame names. The ASCII file is con­
verted into a binary file when starting a MIDAS
session via inmidas 1 .The name of the binary
file is FORGRxy.KEY (xy being the MIDAS
unit) and it is stored in your MIDAS startup direc­
tory which is specified via MID_WORK. For all
the keywords that are specified in the file sys­
keys.dat detailed information about their
layout may be obtained via the command
HELP/KEYWORD.
The routine STSPRO (SCSPRO), which is called
in the beginning by a MIDAS application pro­
gram, moves the contents of this binary file into
the program's data space. Likewise, the routine
1. From release 92NOV on, also in UNIX you start
MIDAS via inmidas and not $inmidas, and con­
tinue MIDAS via gomidas instead of $gomidas

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
14 ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993
MIDAS in the IUE Project
J.D. Ponz and E. Ojero,
The IUE project is a general­user Space Observa­
tory for high­ and low­resolution spectroscopy
between 115 nm and 320 nm. The project is a col­
laboration between NASA, ESA and SERC. The
geosynchronous orbiting satellite is operated from
Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Maryland
for 16 hours per day, and from the ESA IUE
observatory at Villafranca, near Madrid, for the
remaining 8 hours. During the 14 years of opera­
tions, more than 80,000 observations have been
collected and are available to the scientific com­
munity through one of the three archive centers at
NASA/NSSDC, ESA/Villafranca and SERC/
RAL.
MIDAS has been used within the IUE project as
platform for the reduction pipeline and as off­line
processing system in support of the archival
research. This contribution is a summary of our
experience with MIDAS in the long history of the
IUE project.
The observatory works in a Guest Observer mode.
As part of the routine procedure, each observation
is reduced using the standard pipeline, IUESIPS,
that linearizes the response of the detector, cor­
rects for the geometric distortions, extracts the
spectrum and calibrates the observed flux distribu­
tion. Raw images, calibrated spectra and interme­
diate files generated by IUESIPS are delivered to
the Guest Observer, and a copy of these files is
maintained in the archive centers.
The reduction pipeline has evolved over the years,
to include new algorithms and to encompass the
advances in computer technology. The first ver­
sion, fourteen years ago, was implemented on a
Sigma­9 computer with very limited interactive
capabilities. The processing system was VICAR,
developed by JPL, and the interactive functions
were based on a RAMTEK display, controlled by
a PDP­11.
The second version of the reduction pipeline was
implemented on VAX/VMS, using MIDAS as
system platform onto which the IUESIPS algo­
rithms were ported. The migration was done at
GSFC in 1986, just before the development of the
portable version of MIDAS. The interactive capa­
bilities were based on DeAnza machines, the state
of the art at that time, when workstations were not
so widespread. Later, Villafranca migrated
IUESIPS to the portable version of MIDAS, to run
the reduction pipeline on VAX stations.
IUE has started a major effort to generate a
homogenous and high quality archive, the
so­called IUE Final Archive, while the project is
in operation. The main reasons for this project are:
First, the reduction methods in IUESIPS have
evolved during the lifetime of the project, and dif­
ferent sets of calibrations were used; therefore it is
difficult to combine low and high resolution data
or to compare observations taken several years
apart. Second, experience and knowledge about
the instrument have been developed in the user
community; the appropriate feedback from the
IUE community allowed the project to identify
new numerical methods that substantially improve
the quality of the reduced data. The new process­
ing pipeline, NEWSIPS, is being used to reproc­
ess the complete archive, each observing station
being responsible for its own data. The archive
will contain raw data, extracted spectra, interme­
diate data files, and associated parameters stored
in FITS format. The estimated size of the archive
is 8 Mbytes per low dispersion observation and
11.5 Mbytes for high dispersion. NEWSIPS is
implemented on the portable version of MIDAS
and, given the performance required by the new
algorithms, the production system runs on DEC­
stations.
The analysis facilities to support the archival
research have evolved during the history of the
project. Stand­alone programs with very limited
interaction were developed by the users during the
first years of operations. When standard image
processing systems became available during the
last decade, the algorithms were ported to differ­
ent processing systems. Each Agency in the IUE
project has chosen a different approach for the
off­line analysis. Starlink provides a set of soft­
European Space Agency, Villafranca, Spain

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993 13
References
[1] Richardson, W.H. 1972, Journal of the Optical
Society of America, 62, p55
[2] Lucy, L.B. 1974, Astronomical Journal, 79,
p745
[3] Adorf, H­M., Hook, R.N., Lucy, L.B.,Murtagh
F.M., in Proceedings of the 4th ESO/ST­ECF Data
Analysis Workshop, Garching, May 1992, p99
[4] Hook, R.N., Lucy L.B., in Proceedings of the
Conference `Science with the Hubble Space Tele­
scope', Sardinia, 1992
[5] Lucy, L.B.,Baade, D., in Proceedings of the 1st
ESO/ST­ECF Data Analysis Workshop, Garching,
April 1989, p219
[6] Lucy, L.B. 1991, ST­ECF Newsletter 16, p6
[7] Lucy, L.B., Hook, R.N. 1992, in Proceedings
of the 1st Annual Conference on Astronomical
Data Analysis Software and Systems, Tucson,
November 1991, p277
[8] Hook, R.N., Lucy L.B., 1992, ST­ECF News­
letter 17, p10
[9] Hook, R.N., Lucy L.B., 1993, ST­ECF News­
letter 19, p6
First Announcement and Call for Papers
ESO­OAT International Workshop Handling and Archiving Data
from Ground­based Telescopes
Trieste, 21 ­ 23 April 1993
The workshop is oriented to the discussion of the problems related to the management of data produced by large
ground­based telescopes, currently active or being built. Topics of interest are: on­line handling of data produced
by instruments and their description, quasi­on­line processing (quick­look, compression, calibration), storage
and distribution media, setup of an archive database, data ingest.
The workshop will be based on a set of invited or ``solicited'' presentations, dealing with current experiences and
projects, a number of selected contributed presentations, and an open poster session. Half a day will be dedicated
to a round­table discussion. Sessions of informal technical discussion will be encouraged.
The proceedings of the workshop, containing all contributions, the poster papers, and a report of the final round
table, will be published by ESO in the Conference Proceedings Series.
The scientific organizing committee includes: M. Albrecht (co­chairman) P. GrosbÜl
L. Benacchio F. Pasian (co­chairman)
P. Benvenuti E. Raimond
D. Crabtree G. Sedmak
M. CrÈzÈ D. Wells
Please contact the Local Organising Committee:
ESO ­ OAT International Workshop,
Secretariat Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste,
Via G.B.Tiepolo 11,
I ­ 34131 Trieste, Italy,
Tel: +39 40 3199223
FAX: +39 40 309418
E­mail: ASTRTS::ESO_OAT_CONF (DECnet)
38439::ESO_OAT_CONF (DECnet)
eso_oat_conf@astrts.astro.it (Internet and Bitnet)

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
12 ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993
normalised to a total of one and have the peak at
the centre of the frame. Note that this convention
for the PSF peak position is different from that
used in DECONVOLVE/LUCY.
The output is a restored image and also the result
of convolving this with the PSF. The latter is prin­
cipally supplied for compatibility with the co­ad­
dition method described below but may also be of
value as a version of the input image with the
`unfeasible' pixel­to­pixel noise removed.
There are several options which are controlled by
flags. They are:
. Whether or not to provide verbose output
(default Y);
. Whether to use the accelerated version of the
algorithm (default Y) ;
. Whether there is an initial estimate image
(default N);
. Whether the data is sub­sampled (default N).
A typical commands sequence would be:
SET/CONTEXT IMRES
DECON/FLUCY NGC8765 PSF 20
NGC8765_20 JUNK
Here NGC8765 is the input image frame, PSF is a
suitable PSF of the same size. 20 iterations are
applied (a typical number) and the result written
to the frame NGC8765_20. The frame JUNK
holds the result of convolving NGC8765_20 with
PSF and is probably not of interest in this case.
The default switches are used which means that
there will be lots of verbose output and the accel­
erated algorithm will be used. If one wanted to
continue this restoration for another 20 iterations,
starting with the result already obtained one could
use the command:
DECON/FLUCY NGC8765 PSF 20
NGC8765_40 JUNK NYYN ? NGC8765_20
In this case the verbose flag has been set to N, the
acceleration flag remains Y, the `First Image' flag
has been set to Y and the name of the starting
image supplied. For further information and an
explanation of why, and how, the subsampling
option may be used please consult the help infor­
mation for this command and reference 5.
COADD/IMAGE
Often astronomical images are taken of the same
objects and in the same wavelength band but with
different PSFs. Very common examples in optical
astronomy are images taken during different see­
ing. It is desirable to combine (co­add) these data
in order to maximise the signal­to­noise ratio but
undesirable to degrade the higher resolution
images by simply adding in the poorer resolution
ones. Another case is the combination of high res­
olution, but relatively weak, images from HST
with longer exposures taken from the ground
where telescope time is cheaper but the resolution
is much poorer.
The standard RL restoration algorithm may be
easily generalised to allow the combined restora­
tion of several data sets with different PSFs and
this forms the basis of a general co­addition
method of which this command is an implementa­
tion. Details are given in references 6,7,8 and 9.
Images to be co­added must be well aligned with
each other, as must the PSFs. If there is a small
shift between the images, but no rotation or scale
change, then this may be compensated for by
shifting the PSF by the same amount (ref. 9).
What is essential is that the convolutions of the
images with their respective PSF frames are
aligned. The PSFs must be normalised to a total of
one and must be non­negative.
Once these requirements are met the data frames
may be co­added using commands similar to the
following:
COADD/IMAGE N123A,N123B
PSFA,PSFB 20 N123AB_20
N123AB_CA_20
In this case N123A and N123B are the input
images and PSFA and PSFB the matching point­­
spread­functions. 20 iterations (accelerated) will
be performed and the resultant restored image will
be written to N123AB_20. The co­added image
with a PSF matching PSFA will be written to a
BDF called N123AB_CA_20_1 and that matching
PSFB will go into N123AB_CA_20_2. Note that
the names of the output co­added images are gen­
erated by appending a number to a root name
string which is supplied. All of the options con­
trolled by the flags listed above are also available
with this command.
For more details of both these commands it is
strongly recommended that the references and the
help files are carefully read. Most of the work
involved in restoring and co­adding images goes
into understanding the methods and their limita­
tions and preparing the data and the PSFs. Actu­
ally running the program is the easy part.

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993 11
file, describing the photometric telescopes at La
Silla, is called esotel.tbl. This, along with
other sample files, should be in the pepsys sub­
directory below the data directory, which in turn
is under calib in the MIDAS system. These pro­
grams also need information about your instru­
ment: what filters are available, how many chan­
nels are used, what detectors are used, how well
controlled the temperatures of filters and detectors
are, and so on. This information is most easily set
up by using a short interactive MIDAS command,
MAKE/PHOTOMETER, which will ask you for the
relevant information. Before running this, you will
need to collect such information, as well as how
red leaks are treated, and - if you use pulse count­
ing - the type (extending or non­extending) and
length of the dead­time parameter for each chan­
nel, as well as error estimates for the dead times.
The MAKE/PHOT command will accept
UNKNOWN as an answer to some questions; but
you should try to obtain the missing information
and correct the file by re­running this command, if
possible.
Keeping the observatory and instrument informa­
tion in files that are more or less permanent allows
the user to concentrate on the astronomical prob­
lems of planning and data reduction. These files
are in MIDAS table format.
Because the needs of different observing pro­
grams differ, the planning and reduction programs
are interactive. The user tells the planning pro­
gram what accuracy is required, for example, so
the planner can decide how many standard stars
are needed. The user can approve the program's
selections, or modify the magnitude and declina­
tion limits used in selecting stars, and ask the pro­
gram to try again. This dialog is recorded in the
log file, so you can go back and see what you told
the program. The final output from the planner is
an ASCII file that can be printed on a standard
80­column printer. This printout tells you exactly
when to observe what, to get the results you want.
More details about these programs are in the doc­
uments in the doc subdirectory under pepsys.
The reduction program will be distributed with the
next version of MIDAS, and we will have a short
description of it in the next issue of the Courier. If
you have questions about PEPSYS, you can send
e­mail to the author at ayoung@eso.org until
May, 1993.
Introduction
The spherical aberration of the optics of the
Hubble Space Telescope and the resulting
degraded images which it produces has led to
increased interest in image restoration methods in
optical astronomy. Many algorithms have been
investigated and compared over the past two years
since the aberration was announced and they have
also been applied to ground­based data. One of the
most successful of these is that invented by Rich­
ardson and Lucy in the 1970s and often called the
RL method [1,2].
The IMRES context is intended to contain com­
mands which allow efficient and flexible use of
the RL method within MIDAS. At present there is
a single program which can be accessed via two
different commands. The two names illustrate its
use for two different tasks: image restoration and
image co­addition.
DECONVOLVE/FLUCY
This is the basic fast RL restoration program. It is
called `fast' because it performs the convolutions,
which are the basis of the algorithm, using an effi­
cient Fast Fourier Transform code, rather than
evaluating them explicitly as was done in the
older program DECONVOLVE/LUCY. It also
incorporates an accelerated algorithm which
means that fewer iterations of the method are
required to achieve a given degree of restoration
[3,4].
As input the program takes a data frame and a
Point Spread Function (PSF) frame. These must
be the same size and shape and the PSF must be
IMRES: a New Image Restoration Context
Richard Hook, Space Telescope­European Coordinating Facility

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
10 ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993
colour of the graphics window, This option only
works on workstations or X terminals and can
only be used in combination with a colour post­
script printer.
ASSIGN/GRAPHICS and COPY/
GRAPHICS
Analogous to the command COPY/DISPLAY, the
command SEND/PLOT has been renamed to
COPY/GRAPHICS. As announced in the intro­
duction, SEND/PLOT will still be available in the
92NOV release.
In the ASSIGN/GRAPHICS command for Post­
Script printers you can now indicate the orienta­
tion of the plot as landscape (default) or portrait
by appending to the name of the printer ``.l'' or
``.p'', respectively.
Debugging
Previously, you may have been confronted with
minor problems during the installation of the
graphics part of MIDAS. Although the installation
has now been revised and made completely auto­
matic, it was still thought that a simpler debugging
facility would be useful. Therefore, the SET/
GRAPH command now contains the option
DEBUG. If the option is set to ON, the graphics
systems will produce a file aglerr.log containing
the lower level AGL calls and error code in case
of failures. The value OFF obviously will not
produce that file, and is the default.
PEPSYS: a New Photometry Package in MIDAS
Andrew Young, European Southern Observatory
The 92N0V release of MIDAS contains part of a
contributed photometry package written by A. T.
Young. The package is invoked with SET/CON­
TEXT PEPSYS. It has two main parts: a plan­
ning and scheduling routine called by the
command MAKE/PLAN, and a reduction routine
used by REDUCE/PHOT. In addition, there are
some tools needed to convert ASCII files of star
positions or data to standard formats.
The planning program is intended to help observ­
ers get the necessary extinction and standard­star
data in a minimum of observing time, by distribut­
ing the required calibration observations nearly
optimally in time, position, magnitude, and color.
The choice depends on the telescope size (which
affects photon and scintillation noise) and the
selection of standard stars available. A few files of
standards for the UBVRI and uvby systems are
provided, but you can make new files in the proper
format using the MAKE/STARTABLE command.
Any simple ASCII file in the form of a table with
all records in the same format can be used as
input; the command generates a MIDAS format
file (with the extension .fmt), which may need to
be edited for standard stars. Program stars, which
are not complicated by the need for columns con­
taining standard indices, can be converted directly
to the required form by MAKE/STARTABLE,
without manual editing.
The planning and reduction programs need infor­
mation about your telescope size and location,
contained in a short MIDAS table file. A sample
Deadline for the next ESO­MIDAS Courier
The next issue of the ESO­MIDAS Courier, Volume 3, Number 1, will be published in the coming
month July. This issue will include information concerning on­going projects of the MIDAS Group.
Also, we hope to include a number of contributions by MIDAS users or software developers. Please,
send your contributions, preferably in computer­readable format, to the MIDAS account or to the edi­
tor before June 30 (see back side for mail addresse).

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993 9
The upgrade of the Astronet Graphic Library
(AGL) by Luca Fini last spring, described in the
June 1992 issue of the ESO­MIDAS Courier, has
facilitated the implemention of a number of new
features in the MIDAS graphics system. This arti­
cle describes the most important ones.
Before discussing these features, first a general
comment concerning the command/quali­
fier nomenclature of the graphics commands.
Up till the 91NOV version some graphics com­
mands had the name PLOT as command name
(e.g. PLOT/CONTOUR), whereas other commands
had the name PLOT as qualifier (e.g. SET/
PLOT). In addition, the qualifier GRAPHICS was
used (e.g. LABEL/GRAPHIC). In order to make
the nomenclature of the graphics command some­
what more consistent, as of the 92NOV release the
name PLOT (and OVERPLOT) is used for com­
mand names exclusively; all PLOT qualifiers have
been renamed to GRAPHICS. Clearly, these
changes can be inconvenient for users who have
written procedures that make use of graphics com­
mands. In order to make a smooth transition to the
new nomenclature, the obsolete commands with
the PLOT qualifier are still accepted till the next
93NOV release. However, users are encouraged to
modify their procedures that contain these com­
mands. More information about the obsolete com­
mands can be found on page 2 in the article
``General, System and Application News''.
Most of the new features in the graphics system
are available via the SET/GRAPHICS command.
Below you will find these novelties together with
a brief explanation. For more information you are
advised to (re­)read Chapter 6 of the ESO­MIDAS
User's Guide, and, in particular, the on­line help
of the command SET/GRAPH.
SET/GRAPH
FONTS
You can now make use of 6 different character
fonts, numbered 0 to 5, by using the option
FONT. Font 0 is the default and is the fastest. The
other ones are high quality Roman (1), Greek (2),
Script (3), Old English (4), and Tiny (5).
PMODE
Because of the FONT option there is no need for
the PMODE=3 option. Hence this option has been
dropped. PMODE now accepts 0 (for data plotting
only), 1 (for a graph with frame and name of the
data file), and 2 (for data with frame and complete
legend). Hence, PMODE only determines the lay­
out of the plot.
AXIS SPECIFICATIONS
All MIDAS plot commands contain parameters
for the scaling and offset of the graph in both the x
and y directions. You can now set the defaults for
these parameters with the SET/PLOT command.
The options XSCALE and YSCALE take care of
the scaling, the options XOFFSET and YOFFSET
fix the offset in x and y.
The XFORMAT and YFORMAT options to prefix
the format of the tickmark labels have been
enhanced substantially.
SYMBOLS and TEXT
Scaling of text and symbols isnow done by two
different options in the SET/GRAPHICS com­
mand. The option TSIZE can be used to set the
scaling factor for characters; SSIZE is to be used
if you want to scale the symbols. The thickness of
the text, like the thickness of lines, can be set by
TWIDTH. This last option only works on Post­
Script printers.
In the 92NOV release two additional features can
be used in plotting text. First, one can use the
AGL metacharacters to produce complicated text
strings in a similar way as you can using LaTeX or
TeX. Secondly, and also similar to TeX and
LaTeX, you can use metacharacters to produce
special symbols.
MISCELLANEOUS
With the option CLEARGRA you can avoid erasing
the graphics window and creating a new plot file
every time you issue a PLOT command. Using the
offset parameter(s) in the PLOT commands, this
new feature makes it easier to produce several
graphs on one window or sheet of paper. The
option BCOL(OUR) determines the background
New Features in the MIDAS Graphics System
Rein Warmels, European Southern Observatory

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
8 ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993
character strings), TOUPPER, TOLOWER (con­
version to uppercase and lowercase), TOCHAR
(conversion of numerical values into strings, using
the output FORTRAN format associated with the
input column). For instance, the command COM­
PUTE/TAB mytable :NAME = CON­
CAT(:STAR,TOCHAR(:SEQ)) will, for each
row of the table mytable, convert the value of
the column :SEQ into a string, concatenate it to
the contents of the column :STAR, and store the
result into the column :NAME;
The variable name SELECT (short form SEL) can
be used as variable in COMPUTE, referring to the
select flag of the table entries (the value will be 0
or 1 according to whether or not the entry is
selected). This variable can be used to perform
computations only on the selected entries of the
table. For instance the command:
COMPUTE/TAB mytable :Z = :Z +
(MIN(:Z,:MAG)­:Z)*SEL will replace the
value of the column :Z by the mimimum value of
the columns :Z and :MAG for each selected row
of the table mytable.
Selection of substrings can be done using wild
cards. For instance, the command
SELECT/TABLE mytable STRING
.EQ.''S*7[ab]'' will select entries of the table
mytable for which the contents of the column
STRING match the following pattern: the charac­
ter string should start with S and end with either
7a or 7b.
JOIN/TABLE
A new command JOIN/TABLE has been added.
It gives the possibility to perform cross­matching
of tables; that is, to find common objects in two
tables by comparing one or two attributes (col­
umns of the table) of the objects (rows of the
table) from both files, given an uncertainty for
each attribute. For an exact match (uncertainty
equal to 0), objects with identical attributes are
identified as being the same object. For an
approximate match, the attributes have to be the
same within a certain tolerance. The command
isused as follows:
JOIN/TABLE intab1 :X1,:Y1 intab2
:X2,:Y2 outtable tolX,tolY
where X1,Y1 and X2,Y2 are the columns to be
compared, and tolX and tolY the uncertain­
ties. The code, using 2­D binary trees, has been
optimized for big sets of data.
Electronic Network Access to ESO
The main emphasis for ESO's Wide Area Network connections will be placed on providing fast and
reliable access through Internet, although connections to SPAN, EARN, and UUCP will be main­
tained as long as it is reasonable considering both usage and cost. During the major part of last year,
ESO has been allowed to route a significant part of its Internet traffic through an ESA/NASA link.
This has significantly contributed to stabilizing and been greatly appreciated by both ESO and its user
community.
The network problems mentioned in the report in the 1992 MIDAS Users Meeting (Courier, Vol. 2,
No. 1, June 1992) were the access to German Sites using services of the Deutsche Bundespost Tele­
kom and Deutsches Forschungsnetz.
ESO is now in the process of establishing a faster and more direct link to the European Internet Back­
bone to accommodate the increasing network traffic.

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993 7
. Gnu Fortran g77 compiler
. MIDAS release 92NOV + PC patches. The
MIDAS Group will consider the distribution of
the 92NOV release for PCs in binary mode.
Hardware:
. PC 386 or 486
. VGA
. 8 Mbytes RAM minimum
. a tape device or access to network
. 150 Mbytes hard disk. The MIDAS Group is
currently developing MIDAS with shared
libraries. This will reduce the needs for disk
space for executables dramatically.
Upgrade of the MIDAS Table File System
MichÕle Peron, European Southern Observatory
The Table File System (TFS) has been upgraded
substantially this last year. Some commands have
been rewritten and new features have been added,
some others have been optimized. All of them
should be able now to handle big tables. We take a
closer look in this issue of the Courier at some of
the commands that have undergone a major
enhancement.
CREATE/TABLE
The exchange of data to and from the Table File
System is done either through FITS or standard
ASCII files. Thus, output files from text editors
and database systems containing tabular data in a
fixed format can be directly converted into a
MIDAS table, using the command CREATE/
TAB.
The format of such ASCII files must be defined in
a so­called format file: The attributes of each col­
umn of the output table have to be defined (e.g.
type, format). In the previous versions of the TFS,
the starting and last position of each field had to
be defined. They are not mandatory any longer.
Instead, one can supply the list of field separators
that are used in the text file from which one wants
to create the table. If the blank is used as field sep­
arator and if the ascii file contains character
strings, the strings will have to be enclosed in dou­
ble quotes. Let's have a look at one example: Here
is the data file:
12.3 rtuv bnjk 14.5
2.3 abcfd 34.5
A MIDAS table containing three columns can be
created using the following format file (TABS are
used as field separators):
FS = ``\t''
DEFINE/FIELD R :X
DEFINE/FIELD C*15 :Y
DEFINE/FIELD R :Z
In the next example, TABS and blanks are used as
field separators:
12.3 ``rtuv bnjk'' 14.5
2.3 abcfd 34.5
The format file should then look like this:
FS = ``\t ''
DEFINE/FIELD R :X
DEFINE/FIELD C*15 :Y
DEFINE/FIELD R :Z
PRINT/TABLE
This command can be used to print out table val­
ues, or to convert a table into an ASCII file. In that
case, one has first to use the command ASSIGN/
PRINT to redirect the output into a file. The
number of characters per line in the output file/
device is no longer limited to 80.
COMPUTE/TABLE, SELECT/
TABLE
A new version of these commands has been
implemented:
. They now give error messages, for instance
when the input columns don't exist;
. They are three times faster than the old ver­
sion;
. They don't create any temporary file on disk
any longer, and thus can handle big tables.
New functions have been implemented for the
compute command: MIN, MAX, MOD and all the
logical operators, CONCAT (concatenation of

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
6 ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993
. Observatoire de Meudon (Convex 3440).
In addition to these tests, we received test reports
from the following b­test sites:
. Observatoire de Lyon , France (IBM/6000)
. Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Italy
(VAX/VMS);
. ESA Vilspa, Madrid, Spain (VAX/VMS);
. Dip. Astronomia Universita di Bologna , Italy
(Dec/Ultrix);
. Lund Observatory, Sweden (HP/HPIX);
. Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Italy
(HP/HPIX);
. Koninklijke Sterrenwacht van Belgie, Brus­
sels, Belgium (Apollo/10000);
. Max Planck Institut fÝr Extraterrestische
Physik, Garching, Germany (Dec/Ultrix);
. Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, Groningen,
Netherlands (HP720 and Alliant/Concentrix).
We herewith want to thank all these institutes
mentioned for their willingness to collaborate with
us, and all our colleagues at the beta­sites for their
time and effort spent at this release of ESO­MI­
DAS and for all those reports and suggestions that
undoubtedly helped us, and in short also the rest
of the community of users.
On­going work
On a number of machines the installation of the
92NOV release is still incomplete, or the verifica­
tion tests have turned up some problems. Patches
for these machines and possibly others will be
provided as soon as the problems are solved. They
will become available through the standard
``anonymous ftp'' account. Therefore, MIDAS
site managers are advised to check this account
regularly.
Below, a brief description of some of the installa­
tion problems is given.
SONY NEWS­OS Release 4.0
The SONY with NEWS­OS did not give any trou­
ble during the installation, but still has some prob­
lems with the AGL library that we believe can be
solved easily in the coming weeks.
SUN Sparc 10/30, Solaris 2.1
We tried the installation of the core of MIDAS on
the Sparc 10/30, the new workstation from Sun
with the SuperSparc CPU and a beta­release of the
new operating system Solaris 2.1. The installation
did not cause any major problems (System V +
ANSI C compiler) but our verification test
returned some errors in the execution of some
MIDAS applications, which we believe were due
to different mathematical functions between C and
Fortran code. The official release Solaris 2.n is
announced to become available in the first quarter
of 1993 and we hope to review these problems if
they still exist.
MIDAS on PCs
The first implementations of MIDAS on PCs were
done in the Tartu Astrophysical Observatory
(Estonia) where PCs­386 and SCO (Unix System
V from Santa Cruz Operation) were used. Later
the Special Astrophysical Observatory RAS Stav­
ropol (Russia) implemented MIDAS 90NOV on
other PC/AT running INTERACTIV 386/ix,
another UNIX operating system. These two impl­
mentations were not actively supported by the
MIDAS Group because of the many singularities.
Many of the modifications suggested by both
institutes have been included in the latest MIDAS
release (92NOV).
The MIDAS Group has partially implemented the
92NOV release on a PC­386 with SCO/UNIX but
has suspended this development in favour of the
implementation of MIDAS on a public­domain
UNIX system for PCs called Linux SLS 1.0 that is
available from ``anonymous ftp'' accounts in many
public data­bases. The final port of MIDAS
92NOV on PCs with Linux SLS 1.0 is waiting for
the public­domain GNU­Fortran compiler g77
(February 1993). Once it is completed (foreseen
for this spring) it will be announced and offered to
the MIDAS community as a patch file for the
92NOV release.
The 92NOV release will also be tested with other
implementations of UNIX on PCs, like Solaris 2.1
(May 93), and BSD/UNIX from Berkeley
(announced for this spring), as soon as they
become available.
The requirements for installing and running
MIDAS on a PC, will be the following.
Software:
. Linux SLS 1.0
. Gnu C compiler (included in Linux)
. X11 windows (included in Linux)

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993 5
lower case (e.g. line.tbl).
New Context TSA
In order to facilitate time series analysis, in partic­
ular of unevenly sampled data, a new context TSA
is now available in the new 92NOV release of
MIDAS. The context is written by A. Schwarzen­
berg­Czerny and was developed from an earlier
stand­alone version of the University of Warsaw.
It aims to satisfy the needs of those interested in
periodic phenomena, in particular in galactic
astronomy, as well as the needs of those who are
more interested in handling data of stochastic
processes.
Context Echelle
In the Echelle package, the most noticeable devel­
opment is the additional wavelength calibration
method TWO­D (command IDENTIFY/
ECHELLE). In this method a bivariate polynomial
is fitted to the initial interactive identifications.­
Four methods are now available:
. Methods PAIR and ANGLE are based on the
echelle relation (see MIDAS Documentation,
VOl. B, App. E), which allows to reduce the
number of interactive identifications to 4.
These methods now involve a mathematical
diagnosis tool, which in case of initial misiden­
tifications helps to spot the error. The echelle
relation, however, is not valid for all optical
configurations.
. The method TWO­D requires more initial
identifications, but is always valid. It is the rec­
ommended method for EFOSC spectra.
. The method GUESS assumes that the calibra­
tion has been performed already with one of
the three above methods and avoids interactive
identifications. It now involves an estimate by
cross­correlation of the shift between the refer­
ence and calibrated arc spectra.
Interface XSpectra
A new version of the graphical user interface
XSpectra has been implemented by Cristian Levin
in the release 92NOV. The main new features are
the following:
. a batch menu to perform complete reductions
in a non­interactive way. Calibration files like
bias, dark, flat­field, response curve and
extinction table can be specified along with
reduction parameters to reduce catalogs of
spectra;
. an extraction menu to specify sky and object
coordinates interactively from the display win­
dow.
Testing the 92NOV Release
Carlos Guirao, European Southern Observatory
b­Release Tests
The b­test version of the 92NOV release was dis­
tributed for verification to the MIDAS b­test sites
last September, three months before the antici­
pated release.
During that period of three months, this b­test ver­
sion was made available to the users at ESO­Ga­
rching and ESO­La Silla, mainly on SUN and
SUN­like systems because they constitute the big­
gest fraction of computers in our network. How­
ever, to check the portability more carefully, the
b­test version was also installed and tested in
other systems at ESO like Stellar, HP370, HP850,
VAX/VMS, Sony/News and PC/SCO.
A number of installations and tests were done at
the external b­test sites through the network via
telnet and ftp connections to the following insti­
tutes:
. Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, Groningen,
Netherlands (HP720 and Alliant);
. Max Plank Institut fÝr extraterrestische Physik,
Garching, Germany (DecStation/Ultrix);
. Observatoire de Lyon, France (IBM/6000);
. Max Planck Institut fÝr Astrophysik, Garching,
Germany (Convex and Silicon Graphics);
. Koninklijke Sterrewacht Belgie, Brussels
(Apollo/10000);

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
4 ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993
(contrib)..
Whereas the basic system has been constant in
size, a major increase for standard reduction pack­
ages and general applications can be seen in the
last release. This is a direct result of the stabilizing
of the MIDAS core system which has enabled us
to put more emphasis on new applications.
Application News
The 92NOV release contains a large number of
improvements and new applications. A summary
of the most important ones is given below. For a
more complete overview users are advised to read
the news (command HELP[NEWS]).
Significant contributions were added in the appli­
cation area as well. The IRSPEC reduction was
revised by T. Oliva, while an image restoration
and co­addition application, based on ideas of L.
Lucy, was added by R. Hook (ST­ECF). A Time
Series Analysis context, which includes analysis
of non­equally spaced data, was made by A.
Schwarzenberg­Czerny. Finally, a photometry
scheduling program was introduced by A.T.
Young as the first application in a new context for
calibrations of point­source photometry. Several
separate contributions to this Courier will
describe these new applications in more detail.
Table File System
The table file system was significantly enhanced
by making it possible to store arrays of values in
individual elements. This makes it fully compati­
ble with the Binary Table Extension proposed for
FITS. Its basic routines were optimized so that it
now can handle big tables with a size of over 100
Mbytes. Important new applications were added,
such as a join of tables with uncertainties, which
can be used for cross­identification of objects in
tables when only approximate coordinates are
Table 2: Size of source code in different
directories in Mbytes.
MIDAS Directory
release ``core'' gui applic stdred contrib
91MAY 12.4 ­ 1.4 1.9 2.0
91NOV 11.5 ­ 1.4 1.5 3.4
92NOV 12.0 3.5 1.5 2.4 5.0
known.
FITS Reader/Writer
The FITS reader/writer were upgraded to support
the new proposed FITS extensions for Binary
Tables and Images.
Graphics and Image Display
The graphic and display commands have been
improved. More and better fonts were added to the
plotting package, which also now provides more
control to the user. The interactive VIEW com­
mand gives much better options to display images.
The PostScript output files generated by the
graphic and display software are now encapsu­
lated and can be included more easily in other
documents. A first set of Graphical User Inter­
faces has been included in this release to give a
feeling for how the man­machine interface can be
improved for MIDAS applications. The current
interfaces were developed both at La Silla and in
Garching as prototypes to evaluate different
designs. They will be modified to conform to a
general ESO Look&Feel based on OSF/Motif
depending on the user feedback.
New Context IRSPEC
The context IRSPEC has been upgraded by Tino
Oliva (Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri) for two
dimensional data formats (InSb detector 62x58
pixels). In addition to standard spectroscopy
functions (wavelength calibration, sky
subtraction, flat­fielding, instrumental response),
the package includes specific algorithms to correct
for the tilt of spectral lines and bad pixels of the
detector. It also includes tutorial commands.
Contexts Spec and Long
Many changes have been implemented in the con­
texts spec and long and are described in more
details in the MIDAS News (command HELP
[NEWS]). Among these changes are:
. new commands have been introduced in the
context spec, notably a command MERGE/
SPECTRUM;
. The wavelength calibration has been revised:
table line.tbl in world coordinates, double pre­
cision computations, guess mode involves a
cross­correlation;
. the default file names have been changed to

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993 3
include the modifications needed to install
MIDAS in the new Open­VMS architecture.
Patches for VMS will be announced by mail or
email to those sites which already have requested
midas 92NOV and they will become available via
our ``anonymous ftp'' account and exceptionally
by tape.
If you are interested in the current beta­92NOV
release of MIDAS only for Open­VMS, please
contact Resy de Ruijsscher to order a tape.
New Installation Guide for VMS Sys­
tems
A new version of the installation guide ``Installa­
tion of MIDAS on VMS Systems'' is now availa­
ble. Like the document for UNIX systems, it
contains all relevant information for a smooth
installation of the ESO­MIDAS software. The
document is/will be sent to all VAX/VMS sites
that requested ESO­MIDAS.
Others who wish to receive a copy should contact
Resy de Ruijsscher.
Obsolete Commands in the 92NOV
version
In the 92NOV release of ESO­MIDAS several
commands became obsolete, i.e. these commands
have been renamed or really removed. You can list
them via the command HELP [Obsolete].
For all the renamed commands you can still use
the old command names until the 93NOV release.
Thus, MIDAS procedures will continue to work
even if they use obsolete command names. The
first time an obsolete command is encountered by
MIDAS, a warning message will be displayed to
alert you. After that, MIDAS will silently redirect
that obsolete command to its new name. This
behaviour can be changed for each individual
obsolete command: Every obsolete command has
a message counter stored in the integer keyword
OBSOLETE. Look into the procedure obso­
lete.prg in the MID_PROC directory to see
which element in keyword OBSOLETE corre­
sponds to which obsolete command. If you always
want a warning message when entering a given
obsolete command (e.g. in order to find all proce­
dures you have to update), set the corresponding
element in keyword OBSOLETE to ­9999. If you
don't want any message at all, set the element to 1
in your private login.prg file. By default, all
elements of keyword OBSOLETE are set to 0. For
example, if you always want a warning message
when using the obsolete SEND/PLOT command
instead of the new COPY/GRAPHICS command,
you should enter the line OBSOLETE(3) =
­9999 in your private login.prg.
MIDAS and SCCS: Some Statistics
The introduction of source code control and other
CASE tools for code production in MIDAS not
only improves the development cycle but also
provides interesting statistics as a side effect. The
number of source code lines is shown in Table 1
for different types of files, where ``FORTRAN''
and ``C'' correspond to actual program code, while
``prg'' refers to high­level MIDAS procedures.
Documentation is mostly in the form of LaTeX or
ASCII help files. In a few cases, the size has
decreased due to revisions and rearrangement of
old code. For the first time, the new release
contains more C than FORTRAN code. The
change is caused by a significant number of
MIDAS core commands being optimized and
rewritten in C. Most of the astronomical
applications are still written in FORTRAN. The
increase in MIDAS procedures indicates that
many new commands are added by combining
basic MIDAS applications, thereby re­using code
already written. The 20% increase in
documentation since the 91MAY release reflects
the emphasis put on better documentation during
the ESO­MIDAS verification in recent years.
The size of the source code can also be divided
into the main MIDAS classes. As a sample, Table
2 shows some main categories, namely ``core''
MIDAS, graphic user interfaces (gui), system
applications (applic), standard reductions
(stdred) and general application packages
Table 1: Size of source code for different file type in
units of 1000 lines
MIDAS File Type
release FORTRAN C prg LaTeX Help
90MAY 211 175 26 42 24
90NOV 210 199 23 41 24
91MAY 191 180 33 48 29
91NOV 210 204 29 59 34
92NOV 217 275 34 62 36

Newsletter of the ESO­MIDAS Users' Community
2 ESO­MIDAS Courier, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1993
General News
New Release 92NOV
As announced in the Editorial, the new release of
ESO­MIDAS is now being distributed. Copies are
sent on magnetic tapes, written in either VAX/
VMS backup or tar format. It can also be obtained
via anonymous ftp.
If you have not issued your request for this new
release of ESO­MIDAS, or if you wish to get it
via ``anonymous ftp'' but you have not yet been
provided with a valid password (in our ``anony­
mous ftp'' account 92NOV is under a restricted
``midas'' subdirectory), contact Resy de Ruijsscher
to request a tape or to activate a password to sub­
login ``midas'' under ``anonymous ftp''.
This 92NOV release of MIDAS has been installed
and verified on the following machines:
. Alliant Concentrix 5.7.00,
. Apollo DSP10000. DomainOS release 10.4,
. IBM AIX Version 3 for RISC System/6000,
. Silicon Graphics IRIX Release 4.0.1 System V,
. Convex 3440,
. DecStation ULTRIX V4.3 (Rev. 44),
. HP­UX A.08.07 E 9000/750,
. HP­UX B.08.00 A 9000/380,
. Sun SunOS 4.1.2,
. Solbourne OS/MP 4.1A,
. Stellar Stellix Release 2.3,
. VaxStation 3100 VAX/VMS V5.3 and V5.4
(VAX/VMS).
Patches for the 92NOV release
Patches for this release of MIDAS and a summary
of their contents will be published periodically in
the ESO­MIDAS Courier.
Patches are distributed mainly via our ``anony­
mous ftp'' account (ftphost.hq.eso.org or
IP 134.171.11.4) under the midaspub directory.
The distribution tape contains, besides the latest
official release of ESO­MIDAS, the patches that
had already been released at the time the tape was
generated. These patches for ESO­MIDAS are
included in the distribution tapes as a separate tar­
format file. When patches are included in the dis­
tribution tape, the sources of the command
``patch'' are also included as the third tar file.
Patches will not be distributed on tape to sites that
have already received the distribution tape, except
for very particular cases (e.g. those sites without
access to internet). Sites that have received and
installed the distribution tape are strongly recom­
mended to check for the existence of new patches
in our ``anonymous ftp'' account under
midaspub directory on a regular basis.
System News
MIDAS installed on Open­VMS
(Alpha CPU)
The new architecture from Digital Equipment
Cooperation (DEC) is already available in many
countries in Europe. MIDAS has successfully
been implemented on this machine running the
Open­VMS operating system. The software used
for the installation was Alpha Open­VMS 1.0, C
compiler ``X1.3­003B'' and Fortran compiler
``EV6.0­289­24AG''.
A beta release of MIDAS for Open­VMS (a
92NOV patched copy from the original 92NOV
release) is available in BACKUP/VMS format on
DAT/DDS and standard magnetic tapes (1600 or
6250 bpi).
We herewith want to thank the Koninklijke Sterre­
wacht in Brussels (Belgium), VILSPA (Spain) and
the Observatoire de Marseille (France) for their
important contributions in the first porting of
MIDAS to this new architecture and for their cur­
rent collaboration with the testing of the beta
release.
The next issue of patches for VMS will also
General, System and Application News
The MIDAS Group, European Southern Observatory

European Southern Observatory
Newsletter of the MIDAS Users' Community
MIDAS Courier
Volume 2, Number 2 January 1993
Editorial
The new 92NOV release of ESO­MIDAS is now
available for general distribution. The one year
release cycle introduced last year has made it pos­
sible to extend the validation tests significantly.
The current release is actually based on the devel­
opment version of ESO­MIDAS frozen in August.
This frozen version first goes through a one month
a­test inside ESO Headquarters, after which a
b­test version is sent out to 5 to10 test sites. The
final release version is prepared during the month
of November, taking into account the different test
reports. We hope that this rigorous test procedure
and full configuration control of the source code
will provide a stable and reliable system for the
users. More information about the test period of
the new release can be found elsewhere in this
Courier.
There are now around 175 registered ESO­MI­
DAS sites, of which approximately 100 are in the
ESO member states, 30 in other European coun­
tries and 16 in North America. Since many of
these sites have several different computer sys­
tems, the number of registered sites represents
quite a significantly larger number of installations.
Our current statistics (not fully complete) show
that 70% of the systems run UNIX, while the
remainder have VAX/VMS. Of the UNIX sys­
tems, the distribution between different vendors is
42%, 21%, 15% and 7% for SUN/SPARC, DEC,
HP/Apollo and IBM, respectively.
The 5th ESO/ST­ECF Data Analysis Workshop
will be held in Garching on 26­28 April 1993. The
announcement together with a participation form
can be found in the back of this Courier.
After the scientific part of the Workshop, on April
28 th , the MIDAS Users' Meeting will take place.
As can be seen, the program is slightly different
from the previous workshop programs. After the
succesful ST­ECF/STScI Workshop on ``Science
with the Hubble Space Telescope'', held at Chia
Laguna, Sardinia, Italy, it was felt that it would be
too early to have the usual HST session after the
regular workshop this year. Instead, the time will
now be used for a session about new develop­
ments in graphical user interfaces and data acqui­
sition.
This year, from September 6­11, the first ESO­MI­
DAS Summer School will be organized. The pro­
gram will be focused on both data reduction and
programming in MIDAS, and primiraly intended
for reasearch students in astronomy. A separate
announcement of the summer school can be found
on page 18 of this Courier.
In this ESO­MIDAS Courier:
General, System and Application News
Testing the 92NOV Release
Upgrade of the MIDAS Table File System
Electronic Network Access to ESO
New Features in the MIDAS Graphics System
PEPSYS: a New Photometry Package in MIDAS
IMRES: a New Image Restoration Context
Announcement of the ESO­OAT Workshop Han­
dling and Archiving Data from Ground­based
Telescopes
MIDAS in the IUE Project
Expeditions in the MIDAS Jungle: Keywords
MIDAS Questions and Answers
Announcement of the first ESO­MIDAS Summer
School
The MIDAS 92NOV News File
The MIDAS Patch File Summary
Announcement of the 5 th ESO/ST­ECF Data
Analysis Workshop