Fixing Header Problems in Photometric
Data
This topic describes how to add or change
information in the image header that is needed by photometric
measurements. There are 3 FITS format keywords required: GAIN,
RDNOISE, and EXPTIME. The GAIN keyword reports the gain value in
electrons per ADU, the RDNOISE keyword reports the readout noise in
units of electrons, and EXPTIME reports the exposure time in units
of seconds. If any of these is missing, the magnitude error cannot
be calculated correctly. These quantities can be entered into the
image header(s) using the
FITS Header Editor tool. However, there is an easier
way to do this, especially if you will be measuring many images
that have the same values of these keywords. Here you will learn
how to change the header information using the
Info page in the
Photometry
Properties dialog. If any of these quantities is in the
image header but uses a different keyword names, you can change the
name used by Mira using the
Photometry Keywords dialog, which opens from the
Other Photometry Properties dialog..
First, be sure the Photometry Toolbar is visible.
Then click on the toolbar to open the
Options dialog. Click the Info tab to select the Info
page as shown below.
Notice the 3 columns labeled Gain, Noise, and Exp.
which correspond to the GAIN, RDNOISE, and EXPTIME keyword values.
Only Exp (the EXPTIME keyword) was actually present in the image
headers. For the other two, Mira assigned default values so that it
could make the calculations. We want to change the values of Gain
and Noise.
To change a value in the table, click on the cell
and enter a new value. When you click elsewhere or otherwise leave
the cell, the value is accepted. As shown below, change the values
in the two cells for the first image. These are highlighted in blue
to show the changes:
We could repeat this procedure for all the cells we
need to change. But there is a faster way to do this if the same
values are to be propagated into all images. Mouse-down on the Gain
value we just changed in the first row. With the mouse button down,
drag the mouse one cell to the right and downward to the bottom of
the table. If the scrolling runs away, that is OK; keeping the
mouse button down, just move the mouse backward until only the two
columns are highlighted for all images. This is shown below with
the table automatically scrolled to the bottom. Release the mouse
and do not click on the table yet or you will erase the selection
area!
Next, right click inside the selected area to open
a menu of commands like that shown below. Using the mouse, select
the option to Fill down, as shown
below. DO NOT select the option to "Fill top row down", else all
columns, except for the image name, will be copied from the top row
downward to all other images.
You are almost done. The result of fill down
produces the table as shown below.
Finally, click [Apply] or [OK] to
save the changed data into the image headers. The changes apply to
the displayed images but not to the files from which they were
loaded. After closing the
Properties dialog, you may want to make these
changes permanent to the image files by using one of the commands
described in
Saving Image Sets.
Related Topics
Aperture Photometry
Introduction to Aperture Photometry
Aperture
Photometry Properties
FITS Keywords
Photometry Keywords
Mira Pro x64 User's Guide, Copyright Ⓒ 2023 Mirametrics, Inc. All
Rights Reserved.
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