Why and What: It's obviously useful to be able to see the spectrum you just took -- you can see if you have the right object, if the signal-to-noise looks adequate, and so on. Maybe there's an unexpected feature -- better to confirm it right away than be wondering weeks later whether it's real or not.

For some years I have had a script called doitall that produces a good-quality quicklook spectrum for Modspec or Mark III data. The latest incarnation, for the servers installed in 2012 August (mdm24ws1, etc) is called doitall6.py.

The script is nearly the same as the CCDS script, qccds.py, and the instructions for use are almost the same. The only differences are:

• doitall optionally uses my own code for the extraction of the 1-d spectrum, rather than the iraf apall task. The apall task is still used to find and trace apertures.
• The wavelength calibration and velocity shifting features have been tested for doitall, but not for qccds.

For detailed instructions, see the qccds documentation and apply the obvious changes. Very briefly,

• Make a scratch directory and descend into it.
• Make your own copy of doitall6.py:

  		cp /usr/local/pkg/thorsoft/scripts/doitall6.py .
  

• Start pyraf and type

  		noao
  		imred
  		specred
  

• Load doitally.py as a pyraf task by typing

  		pyexecute('doitall6.py')
  

• Type

  		epar doitall6
  

  fill in your information, and go.

Note that the qccds doc goes into great detail about how to edit apertures in apall, and also tells you how to invoke the wavelength calibration.