Hello,

I recently installed iraf and am interested in doing photometry. I had a question about the radprof command...I am interested in using it to measure the radial profiles of my target objects so that I can set my aperture size appropriately. When I try to run radprof, however, I get a bunch of scrambled code in my iraf window followed by the numerical value for the FWHM (as well as the magnitude and all the other outputs) rather than seeing the radial plot displayed. While I know I could in principle just use the numerical value, I would like to be able to see that radial plot display.

Is this just something I missed in the installation? What do I do to set up the radprof display?

Thanks a lot!
Matt

See earlier posts such as http://iraf.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=86437&highlight=garbage

-Mike

Thanks for the help! I had another question, this one regarding FITS image headers. I've inherited some image data that I am trying to work with. They are in a FITS format, with a full image header, but have the extension name of .fts. IRAF doesn't seem to recognize .fts, so I have explored two options: either copy the files to a filename with a .fits extension, or use the command "set fts=fits". Both ways seem to work, as I can then display and work with the image in ds9. Unfortunately, I seem to lose all of the information in my original image header when I do this...is there a way to copy the image header information over?

Thanks again!

Matt

The 'imextn' environment variable controls which extensions correspond to which image kernels (e.g. try "cl> show imextn"). This can be set in your login.cl file by first uncommenting the value there and then adding 'fts' to the list of FITS extensions.

Alternatively, the RENAME task can change the extension to .fits automatically, i.e.

cl> rename *.fts fits field=extn

If by "lose information in the header" you mean DS9 doesn't see the WCS when you use DISPLAY, this is a separate issue (and a long-time problem that requires a change in DS9 to fix). The "set fts=fits" thing shouldn't actually do anything to help.

-Mike

Thanks again for your quick response! I really appreciate the help, I am a student without much programming or software experience so I've never done anything like this before.

It does appear that DS9 doesn't see the WCS when I use display...I can open the image files outside of IRAF (and thus without using the DISPLAY command) with DS9 and the image header is fine. It's only when I try to access the image within IRAF using the DISPLAY command that the header loses the information. Could you point me in the direction of the DS9 fix?

Thanks!
Matt

Could you point me in the direction of the DS9 fix?

You'll need to write to SAO and request that they actually implement it. Like I said, it's a long-time issue but requires SAO to fix it so displays from IRAF work as they're supposed to. Otherwise you can use XImtool.[/quote]

Ok, thanks again! The DS9 contact told me to open the images straight into DS9 rather than using the DISPLAY command (so using File -> Open in DS9 itself), and then I'm able to use the IRAF commands from there.

-Matt