I applaud the efforts of Gordon and Eric to combine information from the MT and the IR camera, but I think it's harder than it seems. First, I have no script to parse APO night logs; I read the log file by eye, and type by hand the information I want to keep into another file. Second, when someone runs the MT pipeline to reduce a set of MT images into a photometric solution, he may or may not specify that the solution be a function of time. That is, he may make one solution covering the entire night (in which case there will be a single extinction value in each bandpass), or he may make, for example, three solutions during the night (thus yielding three values for the extinction in each bandpass). The person may also flag explicitly certain times from the night as "Good" and others as "Bad". In most cases, I think, the MT pipeline will yield 1-5 measurements of extinction per night in each bandpass. However, no one yet has the job of reducing MT data on a regular basis. I have been trying to reduce a fair number of nights, just to test the MT pipeline, but you can't count on me to do this. Third, it often (always?) happens that images from the cloud camera are copied into a disk area on the MT computer in the morning, from which they are copied to tape. Those tapes are sent to FNAL. Thus, raw cloud camera images are sent with raw MT images to FNAL on a regular basis. However, I believe that no one at FNAL currently looks at the cloud camera images, nor is there any software at FNAL to reduce the cloud camera images to a small set of statistics. Both the software, and the manpower, would have to be provided to the FNAL group in charge of regular data reduction. It would appear to me that this not a trivial task; just setting up all the software to reduce cloud camera images at FNAL could take a week or two (if we make it an SDSS product with cut versions and documentation). Writing a script to grab APO night logs via FTP, then parse them to grab the required weather numbers, would take a day or two ... and could be rendered useless if the format of the APO night logs changes. And, of course, there must be someone at FNAL whose job it is to reduce MT (and cloud camera, and night log) information daily. Michael Richmond APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 3 in the apo-monitor archive. You can find APO the archive on http://www.astro.princeton.edu/APO/apo-monitor/INDEX.html APO To join/leave the list, send mail to apo35-request@astro.princeton.edu APO To post a message, mail it to apo-monitor@astro.princeton.edu APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO