How to use the COMICS observation planning JAVA applet

When you click on the COMICS observation planning JAVA applet you should see the following screen pop up on your browser (make sure you have set "JAVA enabled").

Target

In this first tab (Target), you supply the information on your target.

Firstly, please specify the name of your target. Currently there is no restriction on the number of characters, however, space characters will be replaced by the `_' (underscore) character when you press `create' button. So in this example, `Alpha Tau' becomes `Alpha_Tau'.

Next comes the target's coordinates. Currently we only accept either the J2000.0 or B1950.0 coordinate system (indicate which system by using the pull-down menu). Please do not use any letters (e.g. `h' or `d') or characters (`:') to separate the hours from minutes, etc. Simply insert a blank space.

Finally, please indicate whether the target is a scientific object or calibration standard.

Telescope

In the next tab (Telescope), you determine how the telescope (and the instrument) should be configured to perform your observation.

On the right hand side of the Applet, a schematic diagram is provided to help confirm the configuration (when you change parameters, you have to press to see the changes). If you would like to see some scales you can do so by clicking on the box. This option will draw concentric circles with a 10-arcsec interval from the first on-beam (filled red circle) as shown. Filled black circle is the chopped off-beam, and respective open circles are those at the nodded position. Please note that this diagram shows how these beams will appear `on chip' (in the example shown, all the beams are chopped/nodded along a straight line, useful perhaps when you want to chop/nod along a long-slit in the spectroscopy mode). You can also zoon in/out in the diagram window by clicking on buttons.

To understand what each parameter means, you might want to read the COMICS chopping and instrument position angles page.

COMICS

When you intend to do the N-band imaging (select `IMG_N' from the pull-down menu), only those filters relevant for this mode will appear in the Imaging Filter pull-down menu. Please select a required filter.

Input the `on-source' integration time per beam (in seconds) to achieve required signal-to-noise (S/N). Please take into account whether you are doing on-chip chop/nod (see above), how many repeats you are performing (see below), etc. before deciding on the value.

Depending on your priority, target size, sky background brightness, etc., you can select whether to readout a rectangular region of the array (`Partially Readout') or the full array with somewhat reduced sensitivity (`ND Readout'). You may want to browse relevant sections on COMICS overheads and observing technique page. Full-array readout is achieved with `ND Readout' with ND = 1.

For spectroscopy, we show the N-band high-resolution mode around the 12.8-um [NeII] line as an example. When you select this mode (`SPC_NH_Ne'), appropriate default setting should automatically appear. However, you have to either type in the required central wavelength or press to set it to the [NeII] rest wavelength.

Sequence

In this tab (Sequence), you simply specify how many times you want to repeat the sequence to achieve the required S/N (taking into account how many sources you have on chip (see here) and the on-source integration time (and here).

If you enable `Position adjust', a pause will occur between each repeated sequences to allow for, for example, position adjustment required to keep the target on the slit in the spectroscopy mode.

Comments

Finally, please add any additional comments (note to yourself or special request to the support astronomer) in the space provided.

Resultant text file

Here is the text file produced by pressing the button (then pressing the button to paste it here) with the above example parameter values.