Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Mon, 04/09/2012 - 11:01
I'm having trouble uploading images to VPhot. I'm a new user, but I do have a membership and an account. When I try to use the upload wizard, on the second step I click select test image, I choose a .fts image, and then nothing happens. I've tried this several times with the same result. Any advice on what I'm doing wrong?
I have had this issue with IE, but not Chrome or Firefox.
Which browser are you using? Can you try another one?
Geir
I am using IE. Will switch and try one of your recommendations. Thanks.
Wow. That was it. No more IE for me.
Thanks for your help.
I'm having problems again uploading images. It's a little different this time because I'm using my own telescope/camera setup. I went through the upload wizard and VPHOT accepted my FITS header after I tinkered with the date a little bit. Then I tried to upload 3 images. VPHOT said they were uploaded successfully, but they never appeared in the queue or showed up as my images. I have tried uploading in Safari, Chrome, and IE all with the same result. Any suggestions?
What data did you have to tinker with? Image scale? Other?
Instead of re-uploading your images, you could first alter their name slightly and then re-upload, and see if these newly named images show up.
Feel free to send me your images, or FITS headers.
This is the error I got initially:
Invalid or missing date in DATE-OBS header field. Can not continue.
FITS HEADER FOR YOUR REVIEW
Key
Value
Comment
SIMPLE
T
C# FITS: 9/26/2012 12:03:53 AM
BITPIX
-32
NAXIS
2
Dimensionality
NAXIS1
752
NAXIS2
582
INSTRUME
Orion G3 Deep Sky Monochromatic Camera
Camera used
SWCREATE
Orion Camera Studio
Name of the software that created the image
IMAGTYP
Light Frame
Type of image
CCD-TEMP
16.4297435897436
CCD temperature at start of exposure in C
ENCODING
RAW
Encoding type: RAW/RGB/YCbCr/Multichannel
PEDESTAL
0
Pedestal
SET-TEMP
16.951282051282
CCD temperature setpoint in C
YBINNING
1
Binning factor in height
EXPTIME
10
Exposure time in seconds
DATE_OBS
2012-09-26 12:03:53
Date
EXTEND
T
Extensions are permitted
EXPOSURE
10
Exposure time in seconds
XBINNING
1
Binning factor in width
YPIXSZ
8.30000019073486
Pixel Height in microns (after binning)
XPIXSZ
8.60000038146973
Pixel Width in microns (after binning)
HISTORY
File modified by user 'Blake' with fv on 2012-09-26T01:50:07
File modified by user 'Blake' with fv on 2012-09-26T01:50:07
Your header's date information:
DATE_OBS 2012-09-26 12:03:53
From http://www.cyanogen.com/help/maximdl/FITS_File_Header_Definitions.htm
DATE-OBS – date of observation in the ISO standard 8601 format (Y2K compliant FITS): CCYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sss.
Is this a correct match to make VPHOT happy? Is one character missing? Perhaps the letter "T" between the date and time?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
Or is it because your Keyword is DATE_OBS, and VPHOT expects DATE-OBS (dash versus underscore)?
What options do you have to change the way the date information is written to your FITS header? Will the software developer/vendor make changes if you contact them? Can we rig up a script to post-process to correct any/all small format errors that prevent VPHOT from being happy?
Or do we ask Geir to make the date/time recognition/parsing routine in VPHOT a bit more forgiving?
Well, initially I took the T out of the date and then there wasn't an error. However, the images still didn't show up even though they were accepted and supposedly uploading. I used that free Fv program to edit the header. I can tell you that making this change, even though it made VPHOT happy, added stuff to the file extension: .fit~12334. Maybe this is the problem? If so, I don't know how to get around editing the header without causing this problem.
I know that Maxim and CCDSoft can edit FITS headers, even in a scripting environment so that you can alter hundreds of images, but we need to find software tools that meet your needs, based on what you have, or what freeware you can find.
Windows Explorer (file mananger) is ok for a small number of files.
a bulk file rename utility such as
http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php can handle many files, and rename them in many ways.
Be careful, and have backup/original copies stored out of the way of your 'work area'.
Here's the DATE-OBS format of one of my images on VPHOT right now:
DATE-OBS
2012-09-25T09:59:05
[ISO 8601] UTC date/time of exposure start
Notice the dash in the keyword and not the underscore. Also there is a 'T' between the date and the time.
I used the quick upload format so I'm not sure if the upload process altered my ACP/Maxim headers. (Imaging computer is at home right now or I would check.)
....Tim
Putting the T back in and changing the underscore to a dash did the trick. Thanks guys!
The only weird part is that when I initially took the T out, VPHOT was accepting my header and not giving me an error, but refusing to upload the image.
I had problem uploading with IE9 but solved it with this routine. Press F12 when you are on the VPHOT Upload screen. In the window that appear click on menu item "Webreader" and then "Compatibily view for IE9". Close the window and proceed with the upload.