Labeling Finding Charts
With OPCHART

Jan. 8, 1998 version

This script was written by Emilio Falco, Norm Grogin and Dan Koranyi of the CfA to create label pages to go along with the finding charts created by widl.

Here is a postscript file with an example of a chart and opchart.

Instructions for creating "opchart" pages.

The opchart pages are divided into 4 equal boxes, each of which corresponds to one finding chart on an opposing page. Thus, an observer can open a binder with opcharts interleaved with charts, see them together, and write comments in the boxes.
  1.  opchart obj.list [B1950]

    Runs the perl script "opchart", where obj.list is your file with a list of objects to observe, in the same order as your finding charts. The file must contain 3 (7) columns separated by any number of spaces, with the name of each object, and with the J2000 ra and dec in the format hh:mm:ss.sss +dd:mm:ss.ss (hh mm ss.sss +dd mm ss.ss). You can use up to 12 characters (without any spaces) for each name.

    Here's an example obj.list:

    
    MG1122+4455 11:22:33.123 44:55:66.12
    MG2233+5556 22:33:44.123  55:56:57.12
    MG1122+4454  11:22:33.123 44:54:66.12
    MG2233+5555 22 33 44.123 -0 55 57.12
    MG2233+5555 22:33:44.123    0:5:57.12
    
    
    The default equinox is J2000; you can change it by specifying a new one after obj.list, as shown above. The output is opchart.ps, a postscript file (which is overwritten every time you run opchart) that you can print on any laser printer.

    NOTE: Lines that start with # or ! are ignored.

  2. lp opchart.ps 
    Prints opchart.ps.

CAVEATS:

  1. The order of your names must be exactly that of the fits files that were passed to the IDL program (widl) that creates the 2x2 finding charts.
  2. The ordering of the 2x2 charts that the widl program creates on each page is:
        +-------+
        | 2 | 4 | 
        ---------
        | 1 | 3 |
        +-------+
    
  3. Special characters in the names of objects, such as underscore, must be preceded by a backslash, otherwise LaTeX will not work properly.


Last modified on April 18, 2002 dmink@cfa.harvard.edu