Here's some more info for those of you who are
trying to 'make a plate' (or several plates) with some
extra star/cluster fields for Monday Nov. 26.

We'd like to have these special 
plate files (plPlugMapT's) for this round all in 
to FNAL by 5pm CST Nov 26,2001.

Brian Yanny will be available Monday to help
verify that your plPlugMapT-XXXX.par file will
make a 'valid plate', without 55'' collisions,
with proper sampling of objects, sky, guide
and other fibers (light traps, reddening, spectrophoto stds).

Please e-mail yanny@fnal.gov with the location
of a plPlugMapT file(s) that you want validated.

We will assign unique tileIds and Plate# id's Monday,
for working purposes, you
can use tileids 99XX and
plateids 9XX, where XX is an integer.

You can do your own 'validation' of your plPlugMapT
files (and convert them to plPlugMapP files) if
you like by using the 'plate' product, and if you have a 
login on fnal computers
sdssdp2.fnal.gov (or sdssdp3.fnal.gov).
For obscure reasons, the 'plate' code, currently only runs
on OSF1 machines.

I have made a 'sample special plate' (a plate
full of magnitude g'=19-20.5 F dwarf stars at RA~5hours)
and validated it thru the plate process.

All the files used to make this plate are in:
sdssdp2.fnal.gov:/home/s1/yanny/oneplate
You may look there for guidance on to do it:

1. You first make a plPlugMapT-XXXX.par file.
(also see Steve Kent's message #603,#604 to sdss-target)

	You should have LIGHT_TRAP objects
	(stars with g' < 11th mag,
	unless your plate is a short exposure plate
	with many bright targets, in which
	case you don't need to worry about
	these, unless you have some really
	bright stars in the field (g' < 7, say)).

	I extracted the very bright star positions
	from the tycho2 catalog.


	You should have GUIDE star candidates.
	A minimum of 11 are needed, distributed
	over the r=1.49 degree field, but it's
	useful to have many extras in the
	plPlugMapT file and let the plate
	product pick 11 in the correct spots.
	F stars with 14 < g' < 15.4 and g'-r' < 0.5
	or so are good guide stars.
	You may want to go a bit brighter.

	You should have 8 reddening standards
	distributed around the plate
	F stars with 17.5 < g < 18.5 (or brighter
	if you have shorter exposures in mind),
	0.3 < g-r < 0.6 are good.

	spectrophotometric standards.
	Hot stars with 16 < g < 17.5 are good
	g-r < 0.4.  The plate program will
	pick 8 of these for you, so you can have
	more than 8 in your plPlugMapT file.


	sky fibers.  These should be pointing at
	regions of blank sky.  at least 32 distributed
	around the plate are required, but it's
	important to give extra ones if you can as
	plate will then distribute them for you.
	You can put hundreds in your plPlugMapT file.

	Objects:
	You need to have no more than 592 of these
	in the plPlugMapT file.  If you have more
	than 592, the fiberPlates option in plate will
	crash.  If you have less than 592, then 
	plate will attempt to fill in with sky objects
	so that the total number is 592.

2. Make a directory with your plPlugMapT file in
	it.

	Copy in the g_codes*txt files from /home/s1/yanny
	/oneplate/ into your make a plate dir.

	Copy yhe plPlan.par and plParam.par and plObs*par
	file from /home/s1/yanny/oneplate
	dir and edit each one with your platedir and
	your plate/tile ID numbers.

3. on sdssdp2/sdssdp3.fnal.gov
	do the following:

	setup plate
	plate
	plate>makePlates
	plate>fiberPlates
	plate>makeFanuc
	plate>makeDrillPos
	plate>use_cs3   	(this is the collision checker)

	You may not make it all the way thru the 5 platemaking
commands.  You may need to add guide stars, sky fibers, reddenings,
remove objects, etc from your PlugMapT file in order to get
it thru makePlates and fiberPlates and makeFanuc.

If you get it thru the first 4, be sure to try 'use_cs3'
this is the 55'' collision checker.  If you have collisions,
it will tell you which objects are colliding (if you have given all
your objects a unique run-rerun-camcol-field-id number,
use run=0 rerun=0, id=runnin integer if these are not SDSS objects).

Then to get rid of collisions, delete one object of the colliding
pair from your plPlugMapT file and run thru makePlates, etc again.
You must run makePlates, fiberPlates, makeFanuc, ... in order
for things to work each time (it only takes a few seconds each).

You should have some extra sky objects to make up for collided
removed objects.

Be sure your objects are all within 1.49 degrees of your raCen decCen
(don't forget about cos(dec)).

Good luck, please e-mail yanny@fnal.gov Monday with your
problems, or locations of your final plates/tile files.

-brian