Compute radial brightness profiles for sources in an image. This is an efficient version of the routine ds9_profiles_x. The two codes should give the same "answers", but whereas ds9_profiles_x is a script that calls many different code, profiles.sh reads the input image once, and then preforms the profile calculations using the same basic subroutines as ds9_profiles_x, but holding everything in memory until all sourrces are processed.

 
%  profiles.sh --help  

usage: profiles.sh a.fits [-v] [-h] [-dd] [-s ] [-r ]   
arg1 = FITS image to be processed (must have *.profpars file) 
Additional options: 
     -v  = print verbose comments and run in debug mode 
     -h  = show a help file and then exit 
     -s  = sky subtraction method (LOCAL_SKY,FIXED_SKY,skymap.fits) 
     -r  = specify a custom file of radial bin values 
     -dd = dump data files for each profile  
     -p  = name of pixel mask (FITS file)  

To make the a.profpars file specifiying the sources to be processed: 
  % profiles_prep a.fits 

1. Growth curve analysis for aperture correction.

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Growth curve analysis for aperture correction.

In May2020 I began to track down seemingly systematic errors with ZP and SSB (sky surface brightness) measurements on acm images. These were tracked to apertures that were too small on very unfocused images. The growth curve analysis discussed by Stetson was useful in treating this issue.

The profiles_full.table contains the full table of every profile computed for the sources in an image with profiles.sh. This table file can be used to plot the growth curves of every source like that shown above.