NASA funded photometry tools released.

www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-funded-program...worlds/#.UifsLa5hLgw

I'm not able to take a comprehensive look at the software at present but I'm sure some of you will be happy to experiment.


Also, I'm sure I sound like a broken record but, open source! Woohoo!

I downloaded the program.
No .exe file unfortunately.
Program seems to operate out of MSDOS?

after I enter
set path=%path%;C:\python27
in the command prompt, am I supposed to see something happen?

In short, what you're doing is telling the OS where to look when python is invoked. Many python scripts have an environment string as the first line, something like:

#! /usr/bin/env python

instead of having to type c:\python27\python.exe every time you want to run python (or a script tries to run it) it tells windows that if the user types 'python', run c:\python27\python.exe

It's handy if you have multiple versions of python installed too.

EDIT: I should have stated that you may need a reboot for windows to recognise the change. I don't use windows any more so I'm not completely up to scratch.

Michael

I've just seen this thread - and I was unaware of this software.

I note that it is mostly python code - ie scripting language - so there will be no EXE.

Python is fast becoming (or has already become) the language of choice for astronomers - if not in the applications themselves - then most certainly as a wrapper for other tools that have been around for a while.

Examples that I'm immediately aware of

IRAF - see pyRAF - the most common astronomical data reduction environment / suite of packages used by American astronomers.

DS9 - see pyDS9 - data visualisation and access to catalogues etc ("The next generation" SAO image viewer).

MIDAS - see pyMIDAS - this is to the European Southern Observatory what IRAF is to the Americans.

None of these are required for OSCAAR - but are examples of how python is taking over the scripting of existing packages.

Note that there are a whole bunch of stuff you also need to install for OSCAAR to work

See github.com/OSCAAR/OSCAAR/wiki/Dependencies

This includes pyFITS - python packages for scripting the processing of FITS files including headers.

Numpy - python libraries for doing numerical processing.

etc

If you are not familiar with Python - try first doing a subset of the dependencies.

First try installing and playing with python itself.
There's lots of getting started tutorials - if you can add 2+ 2 from command line then you've got a working system. Do stick with 2.7 and not 3.0 - some of the astronomical packages don't work with the newer python 3.0.

For example install python and pyDS9 (not a dependency but recommended generally) and get familiar with examining images using python script (not needed for OSCAAR) - but quick to do "astronomical stuff" with python and get comfortable with it - so long as you have some FITS images.

see hea-www.harvard.edu/saord/ds9/site/Home.html
download link at top of page.
I've recently downloaded this - and it came with (or I copied from somewhere obvious) a script to paint a Gaussian approximation of a large orange star-like thing (that's as far as I've got).


or

Python and pyFITS (needed for OSCAAR) - and learn to play with the data (as arrays, lists etc) of FITS files. (actually that's quick to get going as well - but you do need to know how FITS files are constructed - particularly terminology). OSCAAR will more than probably hide all the FITS stuff and use this as a library.

Then add the rest of the dependencies and then finally the OSCAAR package.

There will be lots of tutorial material on the web for each of these (maybe less for the newer OSACAAR package).

I might give this a go at the weekend.

All the best

Mark C.

Thanks.
Got most of the way there now.
I have all bar one of the dependencies installed.
Cant seem to get NumPy installed.
Doesn't seem to install with Python - the other tools did.
I'll try rebooting and give it another go.