Getting Started

  The first thing to do is to login to the computer which you would like to use for your data reductions. The detailed procedure for getting permission to use the computer and getting allocated disk space for your data reductions can be found in Appendix . Assuming that you have succeeded in logging into the computer, the following subsections describe typical use of MIDAS.

When you have logged in you should check that you have sufficient disk space in the directory in which you are working. For reductions of images an area of the order of 50 Mbytes would be adequate while for spectra reductions and analysis of final results less space is needed. Now you are ready to start the MIDAS system:

• Type INMIDAS on a VMS system or inmidas on a UNIX system. This will initiate the MIDAS environment and the terminal should respond with:

  Midas 001>

• The available commands can be listed out by typing HELP. This only gives you the names of the commands presently available in the system. A summary and a subject grouped listing of the commands you will find in Appendix . You can find the full explanation of the individual commands in Volume C of the MIDAS User Guide. A command can have several qualifiers which will change the mode of execution of the command e.g STATISTICS has qualifiers IMAGE, TABLE and POISSON. It is possible , typing HELP command, to get a display of all the command/qualifier combinations available for the given command. Detailed information about a specific command/qualifier combination can be obtained by typing HELP command/qualifier.
• In some installations a number of tutorial commands are available. (see Table ) They provide an illustration of different parts of the system.

• Simple MIDAS Session
• Exit and Logout
• Executing System Commands
• Some Useful Commands