Reduction pipeline - was RE: Where do we stand? (was Re: SETI like tass project)

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

Hey all,

I'll be the first.

I'm working on an automated pipeline.  I have no background in Astronomy,
which is why I decided to try this (gotta learn somehow).  I am currently
using DAOPHOT II as the frame reducer (and the rest is my own software), and
am attempting to determine what's wrong with my pipeline (whether settings,
or just bad code).  I had made it to the point of having solved star lists,
but the resultant data wasn't good enough, and because of the short cuts I
had taken in code, I couldn't easily get to the raw data the way I wanted.
That and the fact Tom was bugging me for some software (any software, not
just mine), I re-factored (new term, old idea) my software to be more user
friendly, and to start loading my database earlier, and to solve more
problems from the database rather than from individual reductions.

Where is this going?  While not exactly gun shy, I'm making sure I exhaust
all my knowledge (garnered from previous questions) and resources available
to me before asking more questions.  I've been mildly chastised (not without
good reason, I assure you :-) ) because I often ask first, try later.  So,
I'm nearing the point of having reduced data with (hopefully) intelligent
questions to ask, and data to ask the questions with.  Thankfully, someone
always answers my question, no matter how naive the may be (so far at
least).

So from my point of view, teach me how to fish, rather than giving me a
fish.  And as Tom has said, everyone is doing there own thing, so I thought
I'd join them.  I truly hope to have an automated pipeline which is usable
when all done.  If I ultimately fail, then I'll move on to another part of
TASS and try there.

Personally, I'm jazzed about the recent talk about crunching reduced data,
but figure I'd better have reduced data first.  Then I'll see if I can do
DFT's in Perl in my lifetime...

Later,
Rob

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dirk Terrell [mailto:terrell@boulder.swri.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 1:48 PM
> To: tass@listserv.wwa.com
> Subject: Where do we stand? (was Re: SETI like tass project)
> 
> 
> On Wed, 30 Jan 2002 14:26:32 -0600, Tom Droege wrote:
> 
> >OK, I am not complaining.  I understand human nature.  I am 
> really in the 
> >entertainment biz., and I know it.  Still, I hope that some 
> of you can be 
> >entertained by diving into this data and learning how to get a good 
> >scientific result from it.
> 
> Well, it would help me to have a list of things that need to get done,
> who's working on them, and what the status is. I understand your
> laissez-faire philosophy for the project but I think a small amount of
> direction would help move things along more quickly. It seems that we
> are stuck at the basic reduction stage: turning images into
> time,position,brightness for detected objects. I do CCD photometry and
> I have developed my own pipeline that is optimized (i.e. built rather
> inflexibly <g>) for the kind of observing I do which is light 
> curves of
> eclipsing binaries. I could probably modify it to be more general but
> it seems that at least a couple of people are actively working on this
> part of the problem. I'm puzzled that this has turned out to be such a
> troublesome part because we aren't the first to do this. MACHO, OGLE,
> etc have obviously figured it out. Perhaps those actively working on
> the data reduction pipeline can give the rest of us an idea of what
> needs to be done. I am more than willing to help if someone says "Hey,
> I need something to do such and such..."
> 
> Dirk
>  
> 
>