FITSTAR determines extinction and/or transformation coefficients given observations of standard stars along with known standard magnitudes and colors for these stars. Currently, up to five terms are available for the full transformation equation for each color:
FITSTAR will by default perform a fit without a second order term or a time term. Residuals will be displayed as a function of airmass, color, color*airmass, and Julian date; note that these are residuals after the best fit has been subtracted. The user then has the option of deleting individual points from the fit, and also of allowing for a second order or time term, or locking the value of any of the terms at any desired value. This is accomplished generally by allowing the user to lock any of the five parameters. Thus, transformations for extinction or color terms alone are easily obtainable. After allowing for the addition or deletion of new parameters and the possible deletion of bad points, a final plot of the residuals of the fit is made as a function of standard magnitude.
Two input files are required for FITSTAR. The first is a file of standard magnitudes and colors. The format is a header line with the number of colors and the color names, followed by a line for each star with the appropriate standard magnitudes. The magnitudes should be followed by an exclamation mark (!) and an optional star ID and star name. If a star ID number is given after the !, all observations with this ID number are assumed to be observations of this standard star. If no number is given, the user will be prompted to enter the data ID number for each standard star. IMPORTANT: all standard star numbers should have values less than 1000. This allows use of the OBSNUM option, in which the observed star numbers have ID = 1000*STANDARD ID + OBSNUM, allowing multiple observations of the same star to have unique ID numbers. By default, VISTA will recognize this convention; if you do not wish to use this convention and also want to have star numbers greater than 1000, use the NOOBSNUM keyword. The OBSNUM=n keyword allows the user to change the default switch-over point from 1000 to another value. The OBSNUM2=n allows a similar function, but with a reversed definition: ID = n*OBSNUM + STANDARD ID
By default, the program will search the VISTA default DATA directory for the standards file. The standards file can be specified on the command line with the STN=file keyword.
The second file which is required is one which contains the measured instrumental magnitudes, airmasses, etc. All observations should be combined into one .mag file, using the MAGAVER command, before running FITSTAR. It is assumed that all observations of a given star will have the same ID number. The program first searches the VISTA default PHOTOMETRY directory for this data file. The data file can be specified on the command line with the DAT=file keyword. Note that the .mag file contains airmasses for your observations; to get good solutions, these airmasses must be correct! For default xvista behavior, airmasses are computed from the coordinates and time of observation, which requires that the longitude and latitude be known. See the SETUP command for how to modify these and/or check the computed values against precomputed values which may exist in the image headers. Airmasses are loaded for stellar photometry files when the MARKSTAR or AUTOMARK command is used.
The specific transformation equation(s) that will be determined has the form:
mag(corrected) = mag(raw) + z(1)*(airmass-air0)
+ z(2)*(airmass-air0)*(color-col0)
+ z(3)*(color-col0)
+ z(4)*(hjd-hjd0)
+ z(5)
where FITSTAR solves for some or all of the Z coefficients. The airmass,
color, and Julian date offsets can be specified using the AIR=, COL=, and
HJD= keywords, otherwise they default to 0, except for the HJD parameter
which defaults to the midpoint of the observations. It can be useful to
set these values to values that fall in the mid-range of your observed
values to prevent fits for one coefficient having undue leverage on the
fits for the other coefficients. Many people like to refer their airmasses
to AIR=1. If you use the Julian date term, you almost certainly want to
set HJD0 to fall in the middle of your observed Julian dates (note that for
this routine, Julian date actually means Julian date - 2444000). Generally,
however, the defaults work just fine.
FITSTAR will write an output file with default extension (.trn). You can override this default file name with the OUT=file keyword. This file will contain one header line which labels the columns, then a line for each transformation equation that you have determined. Note that each run of FITSTAR will add one line to the (.trn) file. On subsequent runs, if you specify the same (.trn) output file, the new transformation equations will be appended to the old file. You can force a new file to be opened by using the NEW keyword. Each line in this file will contain 8 numbers and 2 character strings with the transformation info: z(1) z(2) z(3) z(4) z(5) air0 col0 hjd0 magname colname (see the equation above for the description of these terms). This file will be used by the CORRECT command to correct stellar magnitudes or PROFILE photometry.
Normally, FITSTAR runs in an interactive mode to allow you to delete stars and/or lock parameters. It can be run in "batch" mode, however, if you specify the BATCH keyword, then all points will automatically be accepted. You can lock parameters on the command line using the LOCK=n[,val] keyword. If the first argument is greater than 0, then that parameter is locked to the valued of the second argument, or to 0 if no second argument is given. If the first argument is negative, then that parameter is unlocked. The standard magnitude and color columns to use can be specified on the command line using the SCOL=mag,col1,col2 keyword, where the 3 values are the same numbers that would have been entered interactively.
Hardcopy options are available with the HARD, HARD=, and PS= keywords. With the HARD copy, both plots will automatically be sent to the printer after you're finished deleting stars and changing parameters. With HARD=n, where n=1 or 2, you can just have one of the two plots sent to the printer. IF the PS=file option is given, the plots will be written to the specified file instead of to the printer; with this option, the first plot will have the character 'a' appended to the specified name, and the second will have the character 'b' appended.
The output plots can be labeled using the TITLE or TITLE= keyword; the former will prompt the user for a title string.
The NOPLOT option can be used to suppress the making of plots entirely, useful e.g. if you're not on a graphics terminal.
The RES and RES= keywords can be used to output individual star residuals, along with the input data information and the standard magnitude and color to an output file.
The STNERR=x keyword can be used to assign a single error to be used to for all of the STANDARD magnitudes if desired. (The observed errors are taken from the input data file). The default for STNERR is to assume standards are all very accurate, with STNERR=0.001. This parameter will really only affect the determined value of CHI2.
Finally, the APCOR=x keyword can be used to apply a single aperture correction in magnitudes to apply to all of the input data; the default is not to apply an aperture correction. If you use APCOR, the value you use will be printed on the summary output page. In addition, solely for output purposes, you can specify the aperture used with the AP= keyword; this will just be echoed on the output summary page.