[Aavso-photometry] Automated star finding

[Jim Roe]

Michael Newberry wrote:
>    It sounds like your problem is a matter of database software. You get 
> the photometry from your favorite astronomical IP software and then you 
> save it to your master database for subsequent mining. Is your problem 
> is that you match by (RA,Dec) and the database program doesn't know how 
> to handle the format? If someone could write a macro to process the RA 
> and Dec, and maybe do some precession if needed, then couldn't you use 
> something as generic as Microsoft Access?
> 

I can handle the database challenge.  I can take images in V and Ic.  I 
can plate solve and save WCS in the FITS header.  What I can't do (yet) 
is, in one automatic operation, pull each and every detectable star from 
each and every image in a CSV (or other) listing with RA, DEC, 
instrumental magnitude, etc on each line.  From there I can easily input 
into the database.

AIP4Win will do the listing I want in PixelX and PixelY, but it doesn't 
   seem like they can use the WCS info in the header and their 
astrometric procedure seems primitive because it is manual.  I suppose I 
can write a routine to transform their PixelX and PixelY coordinates to 
RA and DEC using the WCS info but I was hoping to find a faster solution.

Maxim and Charon will let me manually select any star I want and give me 
the RA and DEC and photometry numbers but some of these images could 
well contain 1,000 stars or more.  I'm too lazy for that.

In my limited study of Mira, I'm not yet sure if it will do what I want. 
  I see pieces of the puzzle laying around everywhere but haven't found 
the missing piece (yet). :-)

Jim Roe