mFlattenExec(1)

mFlattenExec1

Remove the background from an image

Usage

mFlattenExec [-p imgdir] [-d] [-n(o-areas)] [-s statusfile] images.tbl flatdir

Overview

Runs both mFitPlane and mBackground on a set of images.

Options

-p imgdir

Specifies path to directory containing images to be flattened.

-d

Turns on debugging.

-n

No-area-images flag, indicating that mFlattenExec should not require area images for all the input FITS images.

-s statusfile

Output and errors are sent to statusfile instead of to stdout

Arguments

images.tbl

Metadata table (generated by mImgtbl) describing images to be flattened.
flatdir

Path to directory where output files should be created.

Result

Creates "flattened" versions of each input FITS image.

Messages

OK

[struct stat="OK", count=nimages, failed=nfailed, warning=nwarnings]
ERROR

Cannot open status file: statusfile
ERROR

Cannot access flatdir
ERROR

flatdir is not a directory
ERROR

Invalid image metadata file: filename
ERROR

Need column 'file' in image metadata file filename
ERROR

mDiff or mBackground error

Examples

$ mFlattenExec output/images.tbl output/flattened

[struct stat="OK", count=5, failed=0, warning=0]

Releases

5 releases since Debian 9 (Stretch); the text changed 1 time.

  1. 9
  2. 10–13

Bugs

The drizzle algorithm has been implemented but has not been tested in this release.

If a header template contains carriage returns (i.e., created/modified on a Windows machine), the cfitsio library will be unable to read it properly, resulting in the error: [struct stat="ERROR", status=207, msg="illegal character in keyword"]

It is best for the background correction algorithms if the area described in the header template completely encloses all of the input images in their entirety. If parts of input images are "chopped off" by the header template, the background correction will be affected. We recommend you use an expanded header for the reprojection and background modeling steps, returning to the originally desired header size for the final coaddition. The default background matching assumes that there are no non-linear background variations in the individual images (and therefore in the overlap differences). If there is any uncertainty in this regard, it is safer to turn on the "level only" background matching (the "-l" flag in mBgModel.

From montage 6.1+dfsg-1+b1 in Debian 13 (Trixie). Parsed by carta from the page's man source.