Telluric UVES data not reduced by ESO Reflex software

The Reflex software by ESO is an “environment that provides an easy and flexible way to reduce VLT/VLTI science data using the ESO pipelines”.

It is the preferred way to analyze VLT data, even though it looks like a black box (though you may change things but you should be really aware of what you are doing). Nevertheless, it is meant to be an automatic reduction process and all you need to do actually is to give the proper paths. Then, it will detect the available data, check for consistencies (i.e. if all necessary files are there), and perform the full reduction process depending of the instrument used.

This is true for data from UVES. However, Reflex was not able to understand standard-telluric data. After some communication with ESO’s support center it became obvious that something was missing from the uves_wkf.oca file (which refers to the “selection rules” applied to the data). This can be found under: /path-to-ESO-pipelines or reflex/share/esopipes/uves-5.4.3/reflex.

Edit the uves_wkf.oca file (better make a copy first, just in case…) and add these lines (at the beginning of the file, perhaps before the DPR.CATG==”SCIENCE” lines, although it is not that critical as long as you are before the grouping steps):

// blue
if DPR.CATG=="CALIB" and (
      DPR.TYPE=="STD,TELLURIC"
   ) and (
      DPR.TECH=="ECHELLE" or
      DPR.TECH=="ECHELLE,ABSORPTION-CELL"
   ) and DET.CHIPS==1 and INSTRUME=="UVES" then
{
  RAW.TYPE = "STD_TELL_BLUE";
  REFLEX.CATG = "SCI_POINT_BLUE";
  PACK.DIR = "NONE";
  CATG = "SCIENCE";
  REFLEX.TARGET = "T";
}

// red
if DPR.CATG=="CALIB" and (
      DPR.TYPE=="STD,TELLURIC"
   ) and (
      DPR.TECH=="ECHELLE" or
      DPR.TECH=="ECHELLE,ABSORPTION-CELL"
   ) and DET.CHIPS==2 and INSTRUME=="UVES" then
{
  RAW.TYPE = "STD_TELL_RED";
  REFLEX.CATG = "SCI_POINT_RED";
  PACK.DIR = "NONE";
  CATG = "SCIENCE";
  REFLEX.TARGET = "T";
}

Reflex should now be able to detect standard-telluric data in your directories and proceed with their reduction.

The above solution is valid for uves-5.4.3 pipeline and it will be correctly (possibly) in the next release.