Hi all, first time poster. I have been using DSS up until now but through I would give PI a try.
I image using my 8" Newt and unmodded canon 400d (shooting in RAW mode). CR2 files are ~8MB. I have been trying to use the BatchPreprocessing script (BPP) but have encountered several errors which I will explain below.
Laptop specs
Toshiba Satellite Intel Core 2 Core
2GHz
2GB RAM
Windows XP 32-bit
Firstly, I collected subs of the Trifid Nebula over 2 nights. First night - 12 lights, 4 darks and 10 flats. Second night - 20 lights, 3 darks and 10 flats.
First Question: Do I simply add all darks/lights/bias frames into BPP or do I run the script for each imaging session?
Using the BPP script, I firstly notice that my darks are grouped by exposure time. I was imaging using 5 minutes subs (lights and darks). However, given that I manually do exposures via a remote shutter cable, dark exposure times do vary by a couple of seconds e.g. 300, 301 and 302. So, some grouped darks only have one dark.
First issue: BPP falls over because a master frame cannot be created as there's less than 3 darks. How do I group all darks? Not sure if this is a solution but I tried adding "custom files" for the dark subs and making all subs = 300secs. This allowed the script to run.
Second issue: If I use the "custom files" option, the script runs but again crashes with the following errors:
Loading master calibration frames:
Loading calibration frame image:
E:/Daniel/Astronomy/Images/Trifid Nebula/RAW Images/master/dark-BINNING_1-EXPTIME_300.fit
*** PCL Exception: PCL FITS Format Support: Unable to open FITS file:
E:/Daniel/Astronomy/Images/Trifid Nebula/RAW Images/master/dark-BINNING_1-EXPTIME_300.fit
CFITSIO error message stack:
01 : Extension doesn't start with SIMPLE or XTENSION keyword. (ffrhdu)
02 : END
03 : Error while closing HDU number 0 (ffchdu).
04 : Extension doesn't start with SIMPLE or XTENSION keyword. (ffrhdu)
05 : END
06 : Error while closing HDU number 0 (ffchdu).
07 : Extension doesn't start with SIMPLE or XTENSION keyword. (ffrhdu)
08 : END
09 : ffopen could not interpret primary array header of file:
10 : E:\Daniel\Astronomy\Images\Trifid Nebula\RAW Images\master\dark-BINNING_1-EXPTIM
11 : E_300.fit
12 : This does not look like a FITS file.
<* failed *>
Looking at the fit master file, it's only 3KB in size. My fits also are only 3KB in size if I convert my cr2 files to fit (BatchFormatConversion). Any ideas?
I also tried to create my own master frames via ImageIntegration but I run into out of memory issues. I tried reducing Buffer size (8 and below) and stack size (100 and below) but I still run into issues when it reaches
MRS noise evaluation: —
*** Error: Out of memory
<* failed *>
I do watch memory usage and it does peak at around 1.2GB. So I do understand that my laptop probably doesn't have enough grunt. My main concerns relate to the BPP script and why my fit files are only 3KB.
Thanks for your help.
