Re: Data Processing Switch

[Tom Droege <tdroege2@earthlink.net>]

Paul and all,

The last thing I want to do is to commit a sin against nature!  ;^)

At present, the camera data is formated and saved as "raw" fits files which 
need to be dark subtracted and flat fielded.

The proposal is to save the dark subtracted, flat fielded, and position 
corrected files which come out of Michael R's pipeline instead.  These 
still show all the defects.  Shutter problems, focus, satellite trails, 
asteroids, cosmic rays, etc., are all still on these images.  I suppose I 
could save both.  I already have 3-4000 CD's stacked on my shelves.

The advantage is that these allow getting pretty close to a star position 
for checking out some strange measurement.  The "raw" files are sometimes 
as much as a degree off in their fits header positions.  This means that in 
order to check something out, one must rerun the pipeline to get the 
processed .fits image.  This is a minimum of a several hour effort.  This 
will certainly discourage such checks for all but the most spectacular 
events.

It is possible that we keep everything that is required to unfold back to 
the original image, less the cropped edges.  I would not like to try.

Being practical, I don't think it is possible to go back and improve the 
data reduction.  There is no way to get a better flat or dark later in 
time.  I don't know what else we might want to do.

Tom Droege



At 03:10 AM 6/3/03 +0800, Paul Repacholi wrote:
> > If anyone thinks this unwise, then please let me know.  I think this
> > a compromise position between throwing away the primary data
> > (advocated by a lot of you) after processing and keeping everything.
>
>I think not keeping the original data is a sin against nature and
>good scientific practice!
>
>Or do you mean that the camera data is going to be formated and saved as
>FITS files? That is fine I think.
>
>--
>Paul Repacholi                               1 Crescent Rd.,
>+61 (08) 9257-1001                           Kalamunda.
>                                              West Australia 6076
>comp.os.vms,- The Older, Grumpier Slashdot
>Raw, Cooked or Well-done, it's all half baked.
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