stellar subtraction method -- _really_ hard

[Stupendous Man <richmond@p674p06.isc.rit.edu>]

  I know a bit about the method proposed by Christophe Alard
and Robert Lupton for subtracting the PSF of bright stars so 
that one can measure the properties of faint stars nearby.
I would claim that it is _much_ more detailed than we ought to
consider at the moment.  This method requires exquisite measurement
of the PSF, at all points across a field (which takes a good bit of
computing power and a good bit of nice, clean data) .... and then
a whole lot of computing power to apply to the crowded sections
of the image.  I suspect strongly that

     a. TASS images have a PSF which varies pretty strongly
          across the frame
     b. the TASS PSF may not be adequately sampled for this method
     c. the computing power may exceed our current resources
     d. only a small section of the sky contains stars so crowded
          that this method would yield results significantly different
          than simple aperture photometry

  I don't mean to stop anyone who is interested in learning about
the method, or even writing the code to try it out on TASS images.
However, I do think that, at the moment, this might not be the
best thing one could do for TASS.

  But, of course, we're all here to have fun -- so if getting into
the details of such method is your way of kicking back after a
hard day at work, then go for it!

                      Michael Richmond