Quickstart

The reducer package generates a widget-based Jupyter notebook for reducing astronomical images. The actual reduction steps are done by ccdproc.

Installation

The recommended way to install reducer, especially on Windows, is with the Anaconda python distribution. Several of the packages that reducer depends on need to be compiled...and most people haven’t installed a compiler on Windows.

Installing with anaconda

  1. Download and install the Anaconda python distribution.
  2. Depending on your platform:
  1. Windows: Open the “Anaconda Command Prompt” from the start menu.
  2. Mac: Open the Terminal app (it is in Applications/Utilities)
  3. Linux: Open a terminal windows.
  1. Install reducer by typing, in the terminal: conda install -c mwcraig -c astropy reducer

Installing with other python distributions

Remember, this route requires that you have a compiler installed and properly configured. On Windows, you do not have that unless you have set it up.

Install reducer with pip:

$ pip install reducer

Generate a template notebook

To generate a notebook, navigate to the directory in which you want the reduced data to end up. Then, at the command line, type:

$ reducer

That will create notebook called reduction.ipynb. Open that notebook with:

$ jupyter notebook

Using the notebook

The first rule of using the notebook is to read the text cells of the notebook.

There are three kinds of widgets in the reduction notebook.

Simple image browser

Images are arranged based on the values of keywords in their FITS headers. Clicking on a file name displays the image and a tab for displaying the header.

_images/file_browser_newer.gif

The FITS keywords used to construct the menu tree at the left are determined by this line in the notebook:

tt = msumastro.TableTree(images.summary_info,
                         ['imagetyp', 'exposure'],
                         'file')

In this example, images were grouped by imagetyp and exposure.

Reduction step

Each reduction step (bias subtraction, dark subtraction and flat correction) has a widget to go along with it. The example shown below is for a processing a light (science) image.

_images/reduction_step.gif

The key thing to understand here is how reducer is selecting the appropriate master (or synthetic) calibration image for each step. To be considered for matching an image file has to have a keyword MASTER=True and the correct IMAGETYP for the step (e.g. FLAT for flat correction). In addition, for dark subtraction, the master dark frame whose exposure most closely matches the image being reduced is selected. For flat frames the FILTER of the flat must match the FILTER of the image.

You can select the images to which the reduction step is applied. The widget is created in the notebook with this:

light_reduction = astro_gui.Reduction(description='Reduce light frames',
                                      toggle_type='button',
                                      allow_bias=True,
                                      master_source=reduced_collection,
                                      allow_dark=True,
                                      allow_flat=True,
                                      input_image_collection=images,
                                      destination=destination_dir,
                                      apply_to={'imagetyp': 'light'})

The apply_to argument selects the images to which the the reduction step will be applied. To reduce only V-band images of M101 you could (assuming the appropriate keywords are in the FITS header, of course) use:

apply_to={'imagetyp': 'light', 'filter': 'V', 'object': 'M101'}

Image combination

Calibration images can be combined to make a master (or synthetic) image. An example of the widget that does that is below, shown for creating master flats.

_images/image_combination.gif

Note well that this will create several flats. To understand which images in the source directory will be identified as flats, how they will be grouped, and what the output files will be called let’s look at the notebook code the created the widget above:

flat = astro_gui.Combiner(description="Make Master Flat",
                          toggle_type='button',
                          file_name_base='master_flat',
                          group_by='exposure, filter',
                          image_source=reduced_collection,
                          apply_to={'imagetyp': 'flat'},
                          destination=destination_dir)
flat.display()

The apply_to argument on line 6 controls which images in the directory of reduced files will be considered flat frames by this widget. It can be a dictionary with whatever keywords you want.

The group_by argument on line 4 sets the names of the FITS keywords that will be used to group the flat frames. The setting in this example makes sense for dome flats. For twilight flats you presumably want to group only by filter. This setting can also be modified in the widget.

The file_name_base argument on line 3 determines part of the output file name for the combined flats. One flat is produced for each unique combination and the file names generated include the values of the keywords used to group them. For the sample data set that comes with reducer, these files are produced:

master_flat_filter_B_exposure_120.0.fit
master_flat_filter_I_exposure_5.0.fit
master_flat_filter_R_exposure_15.0.fit
master_flat_filter_V_exposure_30.0.fit

It could also be used to combine science images in the unlikely case that you wanted to simply average the images without aligning them.

Short video walkthrough

The YouTube video below has a walkthrough of the reducer notebook. No explanatory audio or text, but it goes through the entire reduction process.