Benefits of using Photometrica
Photometrica, in concert with the GRAS systems, is one of the most productive ways to run a photometry-based project. It lets you spend more time
on research and data analysis, and less time on the grunt work. At the same time it is a full-blown analysis tool; powerful, yet easy to use.
Some major points are:
- Advanced analysis of CCD images, instantly in the browser
- Automatic calibration
- Automatic plate solving
- Higly interactive user interface
- Real-time telescope control
- The only tool required is Internet and a browser
Advanced, Instant Analysis
Photometrica's powerful features lets you analysing single images in depth, or a batch of images to create light curves of variable stars.
Images are available for analysis in the browser in near real time. This will allow
you to get immidiate results, which might be cruicial when working with time-critical
projects like GRB observing, monitoring of cataclytmic star for outburst or nova/supernova
searches.
It is also an efficient way to determine the appropriate exposure time before doing
the "real" imaging. You can do a test image and then check the SNR to decide the
optimal exposure time, and also check that no star is over-exposed.
Calibration
Calibration of CCD images is essential for accurate photometry. This is a tedious process both when it comes
to aquireing the calibration frames, as well as creating master frames and calibrating the individual images.
GRAS provides a sophisticated calibration system that shields the user from the
hard work. It automatically gathers calibration frames - darks and bias frames on cloudy nights, and flats at dusk and dawn. Master frames are continously being updated,
and all images are calibrated before sent to the Photomertrica server for analysis.
This will save you a LOT of time
compared to downloading and keeping track of calibration frames, and calibrating each image. Not to mention the time needed if one operates
one owns observatory. Still,
all calibration frames are available for download.
Plate Solving
All images are plate solved. This means that the true center, rotation and scale
of the image is determined by comparing
the stars in the images to stars in a catalog.
This allows Photometrica to display R.A./Dec. cooridnates for any point in the image,
and makes it possible to automatically select stars from either a user-defined file
of from the AAVSO comparison star database.
Interactive User Interface
A highly interactive user interface gives you full control of the analysis process,
and
lets you make qualified decisions to obtain the most accurate results.
Click here for a detailed feature list.
Telescope Control
You can operate the scopes in several ways. One option is to control it in real
time, specifying what to observe, for how long etc. and watch as the images are
aquired.
A more efficient way to get images is to write a script that typically contains
several targets. This gives more images pr time unit compared to doing it manually.
Through the
Launch-a-Plan serviec it is even possible to reserve the telescope and have
it run a script automatically. This way the system aquires the images unattended while you are away from the computer, and the images are available for you in Photometrica
to analyse when you return.
Another useful service is the
Private FTP. This allows you to have a personal arcive on the FTP server,
and there is no need to download images at all.
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