So I finally managed to do some meaningful reduction of images taken with the ZWO Seestar S50. As a target I picked T CrB, it's currently at ca 10 mag V and this is a sweet spot for the S50 I guess: not too bright, not too faint. And needless to say, there is an ongoing campaign to observe this recurring nova which is expected to do its next episode of kaboom! any time now.
To get down to a standard deviation of ca 0.01 mag in TG (tricolor green) filter, I needed to average 10x10s measurements. The results can be inspected in the AAVSO LCG, observer code EHEA, for the date 2024-04-10, and hopefully many more nights to come, weather permitting.
P.S.: Simultaneously I'm now trying the new photometry software Phoranso by Tonny Vanmunster, but that is for a different thread and forum I guess.
CS
HBE
Hello HBE I tried Phoranso to no avail. I couldn't get it to work, I don't know what the workflow is supposed to be and for some reason it's not reading the star catalogues correctly so it's obvious I did something wriong. Could you share your exoeriences with the software and your workflow?
Thanks!
Pablo Lewin (LPAC)
I think I couldn't explain it better than the Phoranso Tutorial here: https://www.cbabelgium.com/Phoranso/UserGuideHTML/html/Tutorial.html
You can skip the part about calibration because the Seestar is producing calibrated files.
I diverted from the suggested procedures there by first converting the OSC fit files of the Seestar to Green Channel only images (I used AstroArt for this but any better FITS tool will do, like Fitswork) and then used this Phoranso feature https://www.cbabelgium.com/Phoranso/UserGuideHTML/html/FITSHeadereditor.html to change the FILTER header field to "V" for all images. In the produced report I then replaced V again with "TG" . This makes sure that Phoranso uses the TG filter calibrated to V magnitudes.
Hope that helps.
CS
HB
VPhot is now prepared to take color fits files and demosaic them into separate TB, TG and TR images.
- Set a telescope profile with plate scale set to 2.378 and a mapping of TB, TG, TR to B, V, R
- Use the Quick Upload so that you have an opportunity to set the target name
- You can upload the Light images or the Stacked images
- If there are any problems with this new feature, contact me via Slack or email gsilvis@aavso.org
Cheers,
George
Will this work for Unistellar and Dwarf as well?? I don't know if all three use the same Bayer array.
Peter
The goal is VPhot will be able deal with color images from any camera, including DSLR's by Canon Nikon.
Try it and we'll sort out the problems we find.
George
Update
I chatted with Ken Menzies and with his help and through emailing back and forth with Tonny, Phoranso has become my go to software for variable stars photometry...It's an amazing piece of software, super easy once you learn the basics.
Phoranso now allows me to scan old data that I either used for exoplanet work or NEO/Asteroid search or even pretty pictures and to be able to find, plot and report variables allowing me for the first time to fully extract scientific value from my old observations...even when an AAVSO AUID is not available it automates the AUID request and even when AAVSO compstars are not available by Phoranso's addition to "Advised Stars" one can also plot and report a variable using those
This is a very important piece of sftware and once the settings are correctly input makes Variable photometry easy and fun.
Thank you Tonny!