HARPS reprocessing facility in Garching

With the start of the year 2011 the HARPS data reduction software will be available also at the ESO headquarters in Garching.
Users can apply for access to the system locally in Garching by sending an e-mail to the following address: re-harps@eso.org.
The experience of the last years of operations of HARPS has shown that sometimes the HARPS data reduced online at the observatory might require further analysis and reprocessing. This is due to a wrong set of initial parameters specified in the observing template (stellar spectral type, or initial guess for the radial velocity). In these cases the spectral extraction is not affected, but the precision and the accuracy of the radial velocity measurement are likely not optimal. Although these cases are not frequent, they do happen from time to time and require re-computation of the radial velocities. We will try to address such needs by allowing individual Users to visit the ESO headquarter in Garching when this is necessary, and to give them access to the same data reduction software which is available at the La Silla Observatory site, both in its online and offline flavor.

A User wishing to take advantage of this possibility shall contact ESO at the e-mail address re-harps@eso.org giving a brief scientific and technical rationale as to why reprocessing is required, together with the amount of data that needs to be reduced and the intended dates of travel to Garching. ESO, after checking availability, will make available a desk space and will grant access from the user laptop to the data reduction computer. Also, limited on-site user support will be provided (e.g. introduction to the data reduction system, etc.).
Regrettably ESO will not be able to cover any expenses for these “data reduction missions” (travel, accommodations, etc.). The User will use her/his own laptop to run remotely the data reduction software via the standard GUIs. The raw data will be transferred into the reduction machine, either from a laptop (i.e. via ftp) or from the archive ftp site after an archive request has been processed. Saving of the reduced data is again under the responsibility of the User.
Visitors are expected to spend at most 5 days on each “data reduction mission”, and the service will be available during normal office hours from Monday to Friday at the ESO premises in Garching. Please, keep in mind that starting from January 1st 2011 all the HARPS reduced data, reduced with the latest pipeline release will be available from the ESO archive web pages.