RE: Photometric solutions: Disk 16 vs. Disk 17

["Albertson, Chris" <CAlbertson@primeadvantage.com>]

Well, You've got it.  The softwqre I've got will write
out other formats then FITS,  GIF, TIFF or JPG.  I used
the ImageMagic library for saving in non_FITS and cfitsio
for FITS format files.  ImageMagic can do "anything".
My reasoning for including non-FITS
image writing in the real-time controller was that 1) It
would be nice to save thumb nails to a web server in real-time.
2) reading back a 16MB file is a waste of time when the 
real time controller already has the image in RAM.  Why not simply
write it twice, once in each format.

The way this is implemented is a little table or "to do" list
of things that get done after each frame is in RAM.  One might
put a list like this in the table:

  Write out FITS sile
  Write out small sized GIF
  Send image to a display
  Call the data reduction pipeline.
  (any arbitrary action like sending e-mail or updating a databse
   or web page)

There is a crude interface fr adding and deletig items in the
above table. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Droege [mailto:tdroege@veriomail.com]
> Sent: Monday, April 16, 2001 5:01 PM
> To: tass@listserv.wwa.com
> Subject: Re: Photometric solutions: Disk 16 vs. Disk 17
> 
> 
> I would vote for a data acquisition program that extracted two little 
> thumbnails of the V and I image and put them up on the screen 
> along with 
> the mean value of each image, the sigma and a PSF for a sample of 
> stars.  As Michael points out, the mean is a good cloud 
> indicator.  Sigma 
> tells me that the temperature controls are working and that 
> nothing is 
> icing up.  A glance at a small star field would reassure the 
> operator.  The 
> PSF would indicate that the focus was OK.  About 1/2 by 1/2 degree 
> thumbnails would be fine.
> 
> Based on how long it seems to take IS to do these operations, 
> they will not 
> detract from the data acquisition time.
> 
> What say Chris, what is your thinking about on line diagnostics?
> 
> Tom Droege
> 
> At 05:32 PM 4/16/01 -0400, you wrote:
> 
> >   I've modified the pipeline to handle the data on Disk 17.
> >There were three major issues:
> >
> >       a. the convention for image file names changed.  The old file
> >          names looked like this:
> >
> >                   H3R1816.755
> 
> 
> snip
> 
> 
> >   As I work on this data, I am realizing more and more that it would
> >be extremely useful to have a set of diagnostic values printed out
> >somewhere (probably into a log file(s)), showing quantities 
> on an image-
> >by-image basis.  For example, given a list like this:
> >
> >           image number          sky value           FWHM (pix)
> >          --------------------------------------------------------
> >              1                    1802               3.4
> >              2                    1815               3.3
> >              3                    1799               3.4
> >              4                    1830               3.5
> >              5                    2102               4.0
> >              6                    2250               4.2
> >              7                    2883               4.1
> >
> >one could very easily and quickly conclude "clouds moved in 
> after image 3".
> >
> >   I guess I'll need to build some routines to create such log files
> >for the pipeline.
> >
> >   It would also be helpful if someone just happens to have a routine
> >which reads FITS images, and creates GIF or JPEG thumbnails from them
> >using "threshold" and "scaling" information supplied by the user.
> >The ImageMagik program "convert" _almost_ does it all, but doesn't
> >allow me to set the contrast myself.  Any ideas?
> >
> >                                          Michael Richmond
> >
> 
>