[BAA Comets] Submittings FITS images of 67P to the ESA/PSA archive

[Erik Bryssinck]

Hi Nick,

Thanks for your reply.

I have read that in the latest Comet's Tale, I remember this now.  

That sounds very well (due CCD-soft or other software)! What i can understand is that the CCD-images after they have the regular data-reduction (bias, dark, flat), is this with CCDSoft ?, I used in the past but that is many years ago, so I don't know if the images are data-reduced (or calibrated).  Then you have in Linux a tool for the plate-solving (astrometric calibration). But is does just the plate-solving without search of 'moving objects' like comets, is this correct?  For this reason you are using astrometrica in manual mode ? I assume Astrometrica all works faster if the obtained CCD images have undergone platesolving.
It would be great that also the 'moving objects' are detected an reported in a kind of log file or directly in a MPC-format. But I understand that this is a lot of work, and like most of us there is a lack of free time to do this.

I'm completely out of programming since the late eighties. So there is an enormous amount of change and the thread to teach it again, it lacks me time and courage. I wish I could help, but I fear that my software skills are too low. I didn't know of the website astrometry.net,  I'm going to see this website more in depth.

Hope you can have more progress

Best regards,

Erik

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Comets-disc [mailto:comets-disc-bounces at britastro.org] Namens Nick James
Verzonden: zondag 26 juni 2016 23:42
Aan: BAA Comets discussion list
Onderwerp: Re: [BAA Comets] Submittings FITS images of 67P to the ESA/PSA archive

Hi Erik,

I have a relatively efficient processing pipeline but it is based on Linux tools that I have written based around the CFITSIO library. My two cameras are controlled using CCDsoft on a Windows machine which sits by the telescope. The FITS files are saved to a Linux based network storage server. As each file arrives it is calibrated using an appropriate master dark and flat and the calibrated files are then solved using the solve-field utility from astrometry.net.

I can then stack the images using another Linux utility but I currently still use Astrometrica for initial measurements and then my comet VEM estimation tool for magnitudes.

Everything except CCDsoft and Astrometrica runs under Linux but I'm looking at setting up a packaged virtual machine using the free VMWare Workstation player that would allow Windows users access to these tools.

Nick.