Hi all,
I'm struggling with the next step of occultation work - getting a light curve from my FITS files.
I have two occultations recorded from the weekend, both recorded as FITS files via CCDSoft/TheSky.
So, I have a bunch of FITS files which I know contain the target and several comparison stars, but I'm confused and currently unable to process them in to a light curve.
I've tried using CCDSoft, treating the occultation as a stationary variable star, my problem there is it insists that it must plate-solve the images to be able to further process them. This is problematic because in one occultation there's too few stars for a successful plate-solve and in the other there's so many it gets confused and comes to the wrong conclusion as to where it's pointing. Frustrating! So it seems I can't go further with CCDSoft. Frustrating because from what I understand there's no need for the plate-solve, all I need to graph is the variable/occulted object against 1+ comparison objects.
Anyone able to help? Suggest a program that can do this?
I've been reading through citizensky.org and aavso.org in an attempt to work out what software people use but have ended up more confused and haven't found a concise list of what software is recommended (have found many dead links to software).
I've read about "API4WIN" and apparently it's home page is
here, but I can't find information about it - what it does, if it'll help me, what to download.
Btw, I did record one of the two occultations as an AVI on a second camera and have successfully got a light curve from that using Tangra. But Tangra doesn't do FITS.
Thanks,
Roger.