Name conventions

This article documents the conventions for file and directory names on columba, the computer used for data reduction in the astronomical laboratory courses.

In your home directory you will find the directory data_reduction, which is the designated directory for data reduction and all files relevant to the lab course.

The home directory contains further subdirectories:

• data contains all observational data
• scripts provides scripts and programs needed for the laboratory courses

Do NOT modify the scripts or data in these directories. Instead, copy all necessary files to your work directory (data_reduction) and work there.

The data directory contains subdirectories named according to the scheme YYYY-MM-DD, e.g.

2012-08-15

The data in this directory are exposures taken on August 15, 2012.

Copy your observational data to your group directory to perform the data reduction there. The data directory serves as a backup of the raw observations, so that the original data can be restored if errors occur during reduction.

A directory name can include a label, appended after an underscore _, for example:

• _einsteinturm

The data for observations S1 and S2 are taken at the Einsteinturm, so the corresponding directory would be named YYYY-MM-DD_einsteinturm. Special cases may have their own labels, which should be self-explanatory.

The scripts directory contains subdirectories named after the observation IDs:

scripts
  --s1s2
  --n1
  --n2

Copy the scripts to your work directory and customize them there as needed.

Overview: Laboratory Courses