Not a very productive day ... :-(
Group meeting in the morning (to end up the discussion from yesterday), then the whole day trying to comeout with good flatfields in the R band ... not exactely sucessfull.
Also a lot of testing on problems on the new IRAF instalation, which the system adminstrador found and asked me to test it with my "needs" :-) Basically TABLES 3.3 don't work fine, at least not in SUSE. Now I'll repeat the tests on my laptop with Fedora 4 ... let's see.
At night a lot of German studying!!! :-)) And also got an idea on the flats, that I should test it tomorrow.
New week, old problems
Image problems followed me today!
Part of the day was spent on the street solving a couple of problems.
R band flats. There are only 4 groups of images compatible with each other (but 2 are the same field, so 3 groups). Some bright stars, of the compact groups prevent me from using all the images for superflat ... so, some of the CCDs have just a few frames for flats, resulting on very poor flats. Play with rejection algorithms today, gonna play a bit more tomorrow and close this.
Also today we had our group meeting and afterwards more discussion about photometry with the students.
R still on its way!
R is getting more complicated than B. It is splitted in 2 or 3 groups, gotta see that carefully!
B is over and R is on the way ...
Yeah! B superflat is over, had to skip a pair of images because of cosmic conspirancy (when you have diferent fields, but bright stars at the same position on the CCD leaving terrible marks on your superflat). Started to check the groups in R, which will be over tomorrow.
Once I have the superflats, I'll get their illumination paterns with the pixel-to-pixel variation of the domeflats (which have the wrong illumination), to have the images corrected.
Then wavelet analysis! :-) SOON!!
Besides that, nothing, wanna finish this ASAP.
Keeps going
Blocks are selected in B, now checking some results with it to see if they are really good. Then ... R! :-)
Also german class today, which is important hehehehe
Now selecting blocks
The images were selected in blocks for each filter. Each block has the images consistent with each other for a given target. Now I'm checking which blocks are consistent with each other.
The diferences come from the bad weather, where the sky varies and gives diferent illumination paterns ... bad thing for a diffuse component :-) That's the reason why I should be so carefull.
Short day today!
Today the day was full of talks.
First, in the morning a Ph.D. thesis defence, from Peter Anders. It was very good.
After lunch a preparation talk for one of our students which is applying for a position in Postdam and gotta give a talk there tomorrow. We spent most of the afternoon working on that talk.
Gotta leave earlier to solve some issues down town and meet the thesis committee to celebrate the defence.
During the weekend I finished selecting the images and splitting them in groups. Today's work was to check which groups are consistent with each other, but I just partially did that. It will be finished tomorrow.
Today I was also suppose to check some results of the analysis of the simulations snapshots and write about it, because I didn't like my first view of that. Also tomorrow.
Almost there ...
The day was totally taken by the image selection which is getting to an end. Of course anything is always more complicated than you expect, therefore it takes so long. It will end this weekend, anyway!
Post from yesterday :-)
Post from yesterday!!
Yesterday I analyzed more of the modeling of the simulations snapshots. It's tricky to turn those snapshots into "real" images.
Also more image selection :-)
Still going!
Today some discussion with two of our students about basic image reduction and about the calibration of the images.
Also image selection and analysis of the images from simulations.
A bit of a "clumpy" day which ended early because of the german class. Also studied a bit of german, if it counts :-)
And it keeps going
Kept with the analysis of the images from simulations ... already had to do some minor adjustments in paralell. The second pass is running for already 48 hours ... Also got the IDL problem at my old machine fixed.
Image selection should finish tomorrow ... I HOPE AND WISH!!
Today we also had the group meeting postponed from yesterday and after that a talk about photometry in dense stellar fields ... it was nice.
Also some discussion about the strutucture of the OV_WAV paper, which SHOULD be ready very soon!!
New week, new things (also)
During the weekend I came back to analyse a set of images from numerical simulations with OV_WAV. I had some problems to define a proper sky and noise, required by OV_WAV to the analysis, and started to do something else. Now I'm modeling it ... let's see how long it takes.
Did some partial analysis of the first pass of results on that. It is running ...
It's being a while that I don't use IDL in my machine in Brazil ... today I needed it ... guess what? It's not working. There was an upgrade of version on the server and of license, and now the one in my machine don't accept that license. But there should be something wrong because IDL always accept for a new license, the older versions. I asked for help, tomorrow there should be some news about it.
We had a preview of a thesis presentation.
Also, during the whole day there was image selection, a bit slow, to take care of those modeling and IDL problems.
There?
The day was short! In the morning I tried to go to a hospital to get someone to see my allergic reaction ... after being sent to a third building DOWNTOWN (the hospital is at the uni-nord almost outside town ...) I gave up and went to the institute, asked the secretary to help me, who found out I was sent to a specialist who only could see me on monday ... if it was really serious, I'd be dead then ... I hope I never get really sick here!!!
So, afternoon, more image selection and testing the new IRAF installation. No work on the simulations. But I'll describe them now, a bit!
So! They are an expansion from the simulations presented at Da Rocha and Mendes de Oliveira (2005).
Simulated images, with 3 cases.
1- 4 galaxies very close to each other, to see if any diffuse like component is "created".
2- a "extended galaxy" mimicking a diffuse intragroup component (IGL - Intragroup Light), with no galaxies, to see how well we can see it.
3- Both together, like a real case, to see how well we can distinguish them.
The diffuse component had 3 intensities and everything was exponential.
Now I'm checking 10 different intensities for the diffuse component (brighter and fainter) and also de Vaucouleurs profiles, to check if there's any difference.
I didn't check the profile in the "old" simulation because I did it during my thesis and there was no significant difference. But the OV_WAV got so many modifications and improovements that is really a different package from the one I used to the thesis ... so, we accepted the suggestion to test this.
Steps. Everything was modeled and subtracted and what was left modelled again, and so on. After that I pre-analyzed detecting which objects belong to the galaxies, which belong to the IGL to each frame, each pass (21 frames per profile type, 5 passes per frame, 2 different sky intensities ... 410 analysis :-) ).
Individual objects got reconstructed.
Next steps. Define components. Analyse radial profiles and light loss. Right this part of the paper.
That's basically it!
Better day!
Today was a better day!
Selecting images ... yet and I was told by the system manager that IRAF would probably stop working because he was planning to install the new version today!! YESSSSSSSS!!! Finally!! Our version was from 2002 and it was on a coma living with ventilators! Part of it was not working anymore and there was "no one in charge of it".
At the end of the day it was installed. Tomorrow I'll test it (yes, as always I'm the beta tester ...).
Since I was not able to work with IRAF, I finished the pre-analysis of the OV_WAV simulation (which I was suppose to describe here today, but it got too late, I'll write about it during the weekend) and the analysis of the IGL for HCG 90, now just need to calibrate and I have the results. Then I can take care of the other issues about this group and it's done ... simple, isn't it?? Not quite!
Good day, because now we have the new IRAF and I can reduce Gemini images!
Not really ...
Today I selected more images but was not feeling very well so I went home and worked a bit on a group that is already modeled and must be analyzed urgently also! :-)
No news yet!!
Short-notice report
Today a short-notice report of my last year activities was requested by the head of my project ... basically the boss hehehehehe
2 pages ocupied me the whole day, but it was done. Very useful, btw, because I have to write a long report about it and I'm already late with it.
The small part of day left was used to select images ... as everyday!
As predicted
Yep! As predicted the day was like the last ones, but a bit shorter, because I had to take care of some "housing issues".
Image selection and OV_WAV simulations.
More of the same and late post :-)
Late post from friday! I had to rush out of the office and couldn't post on friday evening.
It was the same, no changes. Image selection and OV_WAV simulation analysis.
Day's will be like this the next two or three days probably, even though I hope to finish this earlier.
I'll post, one of those days, a better description of the simulations for the OV_WAV.
101 still selecting ...
More of the last two days ...
OV_WAV simulation analysis and image selection.
Also some discussion with one of the Ph.D. students about image analysis and a talk from the other, about her work. Her talks are improoving.
post 100
That's post number 100, unfortunately I don't have any impressive result or comment to post here, but ... life isn't perfect :-))
Anyway I liked that idea of a "daily science" blog suggested by David Hogg in a conference in Marseille. Is good to review all you did during the day!
Today the day was pretty much like yesterday. Image selection ... still a bunch to go ... and pre-analysis of the OV_WAV new simulation, still a bunch to go (4 cases, I finished one, and that's the pre-analysis, still have to do the "analysis" itself).
basically that! 100 posts!!
