Automate assignment of flats to lights in multi-session

Posted by: Rowland F Archer Jr

I use ACP for acquisition and by default it tries to image near the meridian.  As a result, I end up getting good data, but across many nights.  And I also take flats every morning.

I end up with quite a few nights of data - maybe 20 or more.

When I create sessions in APP, I group a few nights together - e.g., Jan 1-4 is one session, Jan 15-18 is another, etc.  

So when I create a session, APP can read the acquisition date from the FITS header and know the date range covered by that session.  

It would be great if APP could read the date from the flat file FITS headers and automatically assign flats to a session.

In fact, since my flats are all under a directory called "Flats," APP could scan that directory and find all the flats needed by Filter and by Date and load and assign them all t sessions with a single click 🙂 !

That would be slick!

Hi Rowland @rowland-f-archer-jr,

So then I assume you create flats every couple of sessions?

Matching flats on date with lights using the same Fits header Filter tags should be possible, I agree, but I am a little bit concerned with automating this. Some users tend to take their flats before imaging (I sometimes do this myself). So there needs to be some rule implemented, like

"match flats with lights, with same filter as lights, where lights are older than the flats, and don't have flats/Masterflat assigned yet".

What do you think?

I would need to implement that in creating the masterflat, the actual capture date and time is stored of the individual flats, then matching the lights with the masterflats becomes possible with such a rule.

Mabula

Hi Mabula,

I agree, what works for me won't work for everyone.  I think your suggestion is good though.  Perhaps something like this:

1)  "Automatically assign flats by date" is an option - without it, everything works as it does now

2)  If the option is selected, a date tolerance parameter, defaults to zero, is available.  Flats that are +/- the value of date tolerance would be considered a match.  So I could use flats from +/- one day from the date of the light frame.  We might need a separate value for earlier and later date tolerance.

3)  Flats within the selected date range are then assigned to lights with matching filter value if they don't already have flats assigned.

And yes, Master Flats could have a date range recorded in the FITS header.

Cheers,

Rowland