Trouble with first attempt to upload

Yesterday I tried for the first time to upload some of my own images to VPhot. The images are the green channel split off from an image file taken by a ZWO color camera. These images are definitely not of a quality to produce submittable results but I just wanted to go through the process to see if I could get them uploaded and then do single image photometry on them.

First I created my own telescope set-up in VPhot, which seemed to work fine. I first used the Upload Wizard for the upload and it told me (correctly) that my images were missing the Object, RA, Dec, and Filter data from the headers. So I entered this info in the wizard and said next and things seemed okay, and I ended up on the screen that says, ā€œyour images are currently being processedā€¦ā€ and gives a link to the current processing queue. I didnā€™t check the queue at this point so donā€™t know if the files were there, but I checked a couple of hours later and the queue was empty and the new files were still not in my Images list.

Then I found an old forum post that mentioned that the TELESCOP field in the header may need to be set and should match the display name of the scope registered in VPhot. So I edited the files (with something called Fitswork) to add this to the headers and tried again. This time I did check the queue and saw my files there, but after the queue had moved past them they still did not show up in my Images list. They are also not in my list of processed images, with either with OK status or with errors.

I tried the Quick Upload as well and ended up with similar results.

Does anyone know what might be going wrong here? If the processing fails for some reason should I receive some notice? Or is there just a delay (meaning many hours or days) between the images being processed and their showing up in the Images list?

Thanks,
Brian

Brian:

Please send a few images as email attachments. How big are they?

Also send a screen shot of your Telescope settings in VPhot.

BTW, do you know that VPhot has a new BUT unproven ability to upload color images and separate channels? We would be interested in seeing how this works for your images.

Ken

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Ken,

Here is my telescope setup:

The images are pretty large, about 46MB each (about twice the size of the color image they came from) but I will see if I can zip a couple up and email them to you.

I will try to upload one of the original color images in VPhot and see what happens with it.

Thanks,
Brian

OK, I uploaded a couple of color images and theyā€™re in the queue so Iā€™ll see what happens to them.

One other question - for the ā€˜Objectā€™ field in the header (which is asked for by the upload) I used the same format that other VPhot photos Iā€™ve seem use, which is the variable designation with an underscore replacing the space. So in my case I entered this as RV_Cas; I assume thatā€™s correct but if not please let me know.

Brian

Hi Brian,

I recently had to modify my (custom) camera control software to include fields that vPhot expects. You can find a list of the FITS keywords here:

I only add the top six to my images and it works fine.

Brian

Hi Brian,

The link that you posted takes me to the VPhot login page - the same one you get if you time out - and that doesnā€™t work for me (or for anyone else last I heard). Can you send the info some other way?

Thanks,
Brian

As of 2024-11-18, the VPhot FITS header requirements are:

The following FITS header fields are required in order for VPhot to work properly:

  • DATE-OBS TIME-OBS or UT-START
  • EXPTIME or EXPOSURE
  • OBJCTRA or RA (for plate solving)
  • OBJCTDEC or DEC (for plate solving)
  • FILTER: should be B, V, R or I. If so VPhot can automatically use the correct photometry sequence
  • OBJECT: displayed in the image list to recognize images

If missing, these can be filled out during upload. Optional, but strongly recommended:

  • AIRMASS: displayed in the image list, and used in reports
  • EGAIN: used in SNR calculations
  • CALSTAT: to display calibration status (combinations of B, D and F where B = bias, D = dark subtracted, F = flat fielded), OR BIASSUB/DARKSUB/FLATTED - to display calibration status

OK, so I took one file and filled in all of the header fields listed above that werenā€™t already filled in. I wasnā€™t sure what to put for EGAIN - my files have GAIN set to 0 because thatā€™s the way the camera was set - so I put 1.0 for EGAIN. I tried the upload again with the same result - the upload wizard says the file is in the processing queue. I went to the queue immediately after but it said it was empty - maybe my file had already passed through, Iā€™m not sure. But a few minutes later there were a couple other files in the queue (not mine) and the file was not in my Images list. It also does not show up under Processed Images.

And since weā€™re talking about editing FITS headers, is there a tool that can do these edits in a batch? Obviously if you have a lot of images adding the same header info individually to each one would get very tedious.

Hi Brian,
Iā€™ve asked George to follow up with you about the FITS images. He can look at the logs to see what might be failing.

Concerning batch processing, Iā€™m not aware of a program that does this. My stuff, being completely custom, uses Python + AstroPy to modify the headers when needed. If there is a specific camera control program you are using that isnā€™t populating headers, Iā€™d be happy to reach out to the developers on your behalf.

Brian

Hi Brian,

Thanks for following up on this, much appreciated. As I mentioned earlier, this was a very first attempt at taking variable star images and putting them into VPhot, so I know the images arenā€™t of good quality (and I donā€™t intent to try to submit the data) but Iā€™m trying to get interest going in my astronomy club for using our observatory scope (an 18" Newtonian) for science-related tasks, in particular variable star photometry. I thought a beginning-to-end example showing the taking of the images, processing them, and then uploading and analyzing them would be a useful demonstration of what we might be able to do.

The camera software being used was the basic controller from ZWO, ASIStudio. Maybe it has options about what it can save into the FITS header, Iā€™m not sure - I donā€™t know the software very well, I was mostly looking over someoneā€™s shoulder while they ran the camera.

Brian

Iā€™m not seeing evidence in the logs for uploads to VPhot for user obscode SBQ. Something is failing early in the process.
Next time it fails, note the time and send it to gsilvis@aavso.org so I can look at the logs again.
And please send one of these failed images to me or Ken. Best is to put it into a shared google drive and send and email with the share link to me at the above address.
George

I just tried it again at about 4:29 EST - five files, with apparently the same result. I tried again shortly after that using Quick Upload instead of the Wizard, but again with the same result.

I noticed that in my telescope setup I had a value of ā€˜0ā€™ for the gain, which I realize now makes no sense. I thought that might be the issue so I changed it to 2 but it did not change the result.

I will see about sharing a couple of files via Google drive.

Thanks,
Brian

I have used F4W2HDU for batches: