SurveyTools

Aids data analysis for VST/OmegaCAM surveys.

SurveyTools is a Python library to aid the data processing and analysis of wide-area surveys carried out using ESO's VST/OmegaCAM instrument. The library is focused entirely on the VPHAS+ survey of the Galactic Plane, but may contain useful tools for other VST users as well.

Installation

If you have a working installation of Python on your system, you can install SurveyTools using pip:

pip install git+https://github.com/barentsen/surveytools

Alternatively, you can clone the repository and install from source:

$ git clone https://github.com/barentsen/surveytools.git
$ cd surveytools
$ python setup.py install

Note that SurveyTools has only been tested in Linux at present.

The above command is sufficient for most features. For the catalogue-generating module, however, IRAF needs to be installed and the environment variables iraf and IRAFARCH need to be set. On 64-bit Linux, the following sequence of commands installs and prepares IRAF v216 for use with surveytools:

mkdir ~/bin/iraf
cd ~/bin/iraf
wget ftp://iraf.noao.edu/iraf/v216/PCIX/iraf.lnux.x86_64.tar.gz
tar -xf iraf.lnux.x86_64.tar.gz
export iraf='~/bin/iraf'
export IRAFARCH='linux64'

To prevent IRAF from making a "caching" directory in whatever directory you run it from, it is recommended that you initialize an iraf directory in your home dir: (optional)

mkdir ~/iraf
cd ~/iraf
~/bin/iraf/unix/hlib/mkiraf.sh

Dependencies

astropy 1.0
photutils 0.1

Using SurveyTools

Creating a pretty pawprint plot which combines the data from all of OmegaCAM's 32 CCDs into a single quicklook JPG:

vst-pawplot -o plot.jpg omegacam-exposure.fits

Creating a beautiful colour jpg from CCD #10 in VPHAS offset '1835a':

vphas-quicklook 1835a --ccd 10

Creating a multi-band catalogue of PSF photometry for VPHAS offset "0149a":

from surveytools impot VphasOffsetCatalogue
catalogue = VphasOffsetCatalogue('0149a').create_catalogue()
catalogue.write('mycatalogue.fits')

Contributing

To report bugs and request features, please use the issue tracker.

License

Copyright 2015 Geert Barentsen.

SurveyTools is free software made available under the MIT License. For details see the LICENSE file.