Plate.UseSExtractor Property

Plate.UseSExtractor (read-write, Boolean)

Use SExtractor for image scanning, instead of PinPoint's internal detector

Syntax

Plate.UseSExtractor [= Boolean]

The property syntax has these parts:

Part	Description
Value (Boolean)	Use SExtractor for image scanning, instead of PinPoint's internal detector

Remarks

This uses Emmanuel Bertin's SExtractor for object detection instead of PinPoint's internal detector. Use this only for the most demanding astrometry or photometry applications. While SExtractor is slower than PinPoint's detector, it does a better job of discriminating between stars and extended objects like galaxies, it resolves close objects better, and it does a better job of measuring flux on weak objects. You don't need this for plate solving.

The version of SExtractor that is used (and supplied with PinPoint) is 2.2.2, ported to Windows by DC-3 Dreams. Later versions are identical except for being much more complex in order to handle huge images.

Specific SExtractor configuration and parameters files are required (and supplied as PinPoint.sex and PinPoint.param). The configuration file must specify ASCII and not ASCII_HEAD catalog output format, and the specification for catalog file name is ignored. Instead, PinPoint directs SExtractor to produce the output catalog file with the same name as the image, with ".sx" appended (for example M67.fts.sx). Ready to use files are installed along with sectractor.exe into the PinPoint engine directory.

The parameters file must start with the following fields:

X_IMAGE
Y_IMAGE
XMIN_IMAGE
XMAX_IMAGE
YMIN_IMAGE
YMAX_IMAGE
FLUX_ISO
FLAGS

Additional parameters may be specified after the above. They will be ignored by PinPoint. In addition, any line within the SExtractor catalog beginning with '%' will be ignored. This was added to accommodate special appications where additional data is being added to SExtractor catalogs generated by pipelines running external to PinPoint.