Isophot plots

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Thu, 01/24/2013 - 22:13

Hello

I would like to develop a plot of the isophots for an image of a nebulea around a variable star.  I have the image in .fits format.  I have tried to use Maxim to do this, but cannot.  Is there a freeware or low cost software that would allow one to do this?  

Thanks 

Gary

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Try Aladin

Hi Gary,

I don't see much use in the amateur community but I am growing fond of Aladin (JAVA-based). It is suited to astronomy and will do contours. Aladin is a tool in the virtual astronomy (VO) initiative. There are lots of other VO software tools that I am exploring (topcat, saada), neat stuff.

http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/

Michael

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
isophotal plots

I believe IRAF will do this (of course!), and I remember writing such a tool back when I was at Goddard many decades ago, so it can't be too difficult.  Another package is superMongo:

http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~rhl/sm/

which I think Robert Lupton will give out freely to needy people.  It is a nice interactive plotting package that also comes with a software-callable library of routines.

Arne

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Isophots & DS9

I decided to use DS9 to make some isophots and contour plots.  Userd it for putting scale info on the charts.  I can save this info, and view it as a JPG in various programs, but I would like to reopen it in DS9 and edit some of the annotations.  Is this possible.?