Re: Time for Software

[hjohnson@pluto.njcc.com (Herbert R Johnson)]

On Wed, 2 Aug 2000 13:38:06 -0400 , "Gutzwiller, Michael" <mgutzwiller@lanvision.com> wrote:
*>I'll take a whack at the pipeline stages:
*>
*>Stage                        Input                 Output
*>
*>Camera Calibration           Photons               Dark Field, Flat Field
*>Image Acquisition            Photons               FITS Image
*>Star List Generation         FITS Image,           Star List (x,y)
*>                             Dark Field,
*>                             Flat Field 
*>Registration to Catalog      Star List (x,y)       Star List (ra,dec)
*>Color Calibration            Star List (x,y)       Star List (ra,dec)
*>Insert to database           Star List (ra, dec)   Observations database
*>
*>There may be other steps for calibration or post processing like FlatComp
*>for Mark III images.  Some steps may be combined as Star does with star list
*>generation and registration to catalog.  Some steps may be reversed such as
*>doing color calibration on the observations database as was done with the
*>tenx catalog.
*>
*>I believe the relevant places to standardize are the same as for the Mark
*>III - FITS image, Star List (ra,dec), and database format.
*>
*>
*>Mike G.
*>

I would refer everyone to Tech Note #57, in which I tried to document
the Mark III "pipelines" including star as Mike describes. Also Tech
Note #56 by Richmond on TenXcat for that end of the Mark III process.
I wrote my TN in part so that we'd have a good reference for Mark IV
work. As has been said, there will be comparisions between the Windows
and Linux tracks for Mark IV, so a common reference like these notes
is a good place to start. If someone suggests these old TN's are irrelevant,
Michael Richmond has already said, in effect, he is using his Mark III
tools for the Mark IV, so history is apparently not irrelevant.

I hope one of the Mark IV participants develops and updates similar TN's as
the next wave of Mark IV software is developed and tested. It's a lot
of work for a third party to gather that info, or for a new camera owner
to sort out how to produce and process their data without such a single
set of references.

Herb Johnson

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