RE: Common and uncommon goals and software

["Creager, Robert S" <CreagRS@LOUISVILLE.STORTEK.COM>]

>      
>        - in what language would it be written?
>        - under what platforms would it run?
>        - what sort of graphics would it support?
>
Well, your getting my point, but then going beyond it (I think).  The
language to use?  C/C++ and Perl (both run on *nix and Win - I say Perl
rather than other scripting languages since I hold illusions that I will be
doing some of the glue scripting), or maybe all C/C++ eventually.  It would
be targeted toward *nix and Win (command line).  It wouldn't support
graphics at all.  This software crunches data automatically once set up
correctly.  Visualization would be done on the data generated with
pre-existing packages.  If the code is kept conceptually simple, the porting
won't be difficult between platforms.
        
> 
>   There may also be secondary considerations which prevent us all from
> settling on one piece of software:
> 
>        - preferences for specific algorithms (e.g. PSF-fitting versus
>                  aperture photometry)
>        - different reference catalogs
>        - different interests (e.g. variable stars vs. an all-sky 
>                  photometric survey)
>        - general pigheadedness: we don't believe that software written
>                  by someone else is as good as our own
> 
But I believe that a consensus could be reached which would pick 1 method
for the above options with the intent of generating large amounts of data
into 1 central database which would be used for some purpose.  And then
folks can generate their own reduction pipelines in addition to the common
one.

> 
>   Finally, suppose that there were one generic pipeline that satisfied
> all of us in its performance on Mark IV data.  The Mark IV has images
> 4.2 degrees on a side, with pixels about 7 arcsec wide.  Joe 
> Astronomer
> at Podunk U. has a different setup: a telescope with a CCD 
> camera which
> produces images 0.2 degrees on a side with pixels 0.56 arcsec wide.
> His telescope goes down to mag 19 and saturates at mag 12, whereas
> the Mark IV covers the magnitude range 8 - 14, say.  Will Joe 
> Astronomer
> be able to use the generic pipeline for _his_ data, too?
>
Here's were some idealism and lack of specific knowledge comes in.  If we
have algorithms which detect stars, match them against lists and
appropriately scale and such, why couldn't they be run on Joe's data for the
purpose of advancing our desired database?  He may not want to use the data
generated, but since Podunk U has idle computing machines, he doesn't mind
crunching data to help our cause.

> 
>   There is a software package used by many different astronomers
> to reduce and analyze data from many different instruments.  It is 
> called "IRAF", and you can read about it, and download it, from
> 
I've downloaded and installed IRAF, and have to agree with the complexity
standpoint.  From an automation point, I'm not sure IRAF would be the way to
go.  True, you can write scripts, but it's sooooo complex...  For this idea
to work, the installation should be as simple as possible, which IRAF isn't.
If SPS does what enough people would agree on (or some other source
available package), since it works on windows, and is relatively simple to
install...

I'm not proposing a package which does everything for everyone, just the
ability to do the same thing to all the data in a manner which would benefit
a goal which requires having lots of observational data.  Like Tom's
variable star database, or something else.

Cheers,
Rob