[Aavso-photometry] Automated star finding

[Tomas L. Gomez]

> Has that Plate.Star list been filtered for such properties as roundness, elongation,
> area, and brightness? If not, then doesn't it include stars as well as hot
> pixels, cosmic rays, blemishes, and galaxies?

I am not sure, but I guess that it will give all objects detected (including
cosmic rays, etc...). There are two other properties: Area (pixels occupied by
the object) and Width (the width of the object) that could be used to filter
the detections. There are other properties as well (Magnitude, Flux, ...)
which can also help with this.

When I have the time, I will look more carefully at this and write a script
(I was meaning to do this anyway).

By the way, I have Mira and I have a question about it: is it possible to
use it from a Visual Basic script (in the same way that it can be done
with CCDSoft, MaximDL, TheSky6 and PinPoint). Right now I only use Mira
occasionally, but if I could use it from a script it would certainly become
part of my regular processing pipeline.

Thanks,

Tomas Gomez (GOT)

>
> Michael Newberry
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tomas L. Gomez" <tomas.l.gomez at gmail.com>
> To: <aavso-photometry at mira.aavso.org>
> Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2007 3:39 PM
> Subject: [Aavso-photometry] Automated star finding
>
>
> > Hi Jim,
> >
> > I you know how to write a Visual Basic script, I think that PinPoint
> > will do the job. After using the method "Plate.Solve" it produces a
> > collection of objects "PlateStar" one for each star detected. The
> > properties "PlateStar.RightAscension" and "PlateStar.Declination"
> > is what you are looking for. In fact, I think that it makes two
> > collections
> > of objects "PlateStar" one for the objects detected in the plate,
> > and another for the stars in the catalogue which have been matched
> > to the objects detected.
> >
> > If you need help with the script, let me know.
> >
> > CCDSoft might be even easier. When you make a plate solution,
> > it adds to the FITS heading one line for each star matched, with
> > RA and Dec. The problem with CCDSoft is that I am not sure if it
> > will show list objects not in the catalogue (for instance, a nova).
> >
> > Hope this helps,
> >
> > Tomas Gomez (GOT)
> >
> > On 8/9/07, Jim Roe <jroe at jamesroe.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> 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
> >> _______________________________________________
> >>
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> >>
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