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A problem with asthedit

Guest wrote on Oct 20, 2005

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have been experiencing a problem using the IRAF task asthedit and I
would be grateful for any feedback you have on a possible solution or
work around. To begin with, I am using IRAF V2.12.2a on a pentium 4
computer running ubuntu linux. I have, however, tried the same
procedure on a similar computer running SUSE linux 9.3 and V2.12.2 of
IRAF and had the same result.

I have been trying to use asthedit to add the sidereal time keywork (st)
to the headers of several fits spectra (these fits files are from the
Ritter Observatory archive). The command file that I was using
contained the line

st = mst (@'date-obs', ut, '83.58')

Running the command on a file (in verbose mode) produces the output

File of commands (st.cmds):
930924.018.fits:
$I = 930924.018.fits
$D = 20/10/05
$T = 17:06:08
$GMD = 2005-10-20
$GMT = 16:06:08
$GMDT = 2005-10-20T16:06:08
ERROR: segmentation violation

I have used the same command (obviously with a look up of the different
observatory's longitude) on fits spectra from other sites without any
problem. If I enter the date by hand i.e. '24/09/93', it also works
fine.

I believed I have slightly narrowed down the problem to the way that
DATE-OBS is stored in the header. In the Ritter observatory file it is
stored as

DATE-OBS= '24/09/93' /(character) date of data
aquisition

and when you try and access the keyword for example using the command
file

test = @'date-obs'

you get

test = 24.

In fits spectra from the INT archive, where this task works fine,
date-obs is stored as

DATE-OBS= '03/09/91' /Date of the observation

and running

test = @'date-obs'

produces

test = 03/09/91

i.e. it works fine. Would you know why the task works with one keyword
format and not the other and, would you by any chance know how I can get
around the problem without having to enter the date into the command
file for each fits spectrum that I am looking at (there could be quite a
few)? I am happy to send you example files if it would help but I
decided that this would probably not be a wise option to begin with.

Many thanks for your time and any help you can give me.

Best wishes,
Dugan Witherick
School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin

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Last post on Oct 20, 2005