WBPP Keyword Group Help Please

Stacey Baczkowski

I have watched your videos on grouping by keyword and they seem pretty straight forward.  For the life of me, I cannot get it to work.  I have two sets of lights that were taken on different nights using different filters.  I have two flats, one for each filter.  I have one master dark for both nights since the exposure time is the same for all lights.  I have put the lights and flats into separate folders and can get them to load into WBPP correctly - they split out by filter and the correct flat is associated with each light.  When I add my group keyword "BATNEB", one of the lights is not longer associated with the correct flat and I manually assign the flat and dark.  I want to integrate both nights with both filters into one image.  This is where I cannot get it to work.  I've tried different iterations of directory structure and no luck.  What am I missing?  Thank you!

BlockHead

Hi Stacey,

Here is some information that will be helpful.

Although you have two flats- I *think* you are using the same flat for each night. Correct?

You have ONE ldas flat and ONE Lpro. Otherwise I would expect to see four flat field images in your Flats section of the calibration panel.

This means you do not need a Keyword for the flats! Although they were taken on different nights... the lights will automatically match the correct flat- since it is unique to the filter. If you took an Lpro flat on Night1 and a different Lpro flat for Night2... then a keyword will distinguish them since they are the same filter and only the difference in night matters.

However, the way you set it up should work for the flats. You say when you add BATNEB the flats doesn't work. I would need to see why. It should work. You can generate all of the WBPP screenshots by pressing one button. In WBPP go to the diagnostics tab and press generate screen shots. The JPEGS will be saved in your logs folder.

Now with respect to the dark frame. You do NOT want to put the darks in the folder with your lights. You do NOT want it associated with a keyword. You can see in your screenshot it is. It is associated with the "Night1" value. This means you put the darks in the NIGHT1 folder. Take them out (put them in the folder "above" (or parent to)) Night1 and that should be taken care of.

Finally..I do not know if you did this or not..but you want your Keyword that is the name of the Folders to be r e a l l y  d i f f e r e n t   than the file names or a parent Folder. I note that your parent folder is called "Bat Nebula" That is pretty close to "BatNeb" except for a space. I can't remember how WBPP interprets spaces (it should be different)... but this is a bit dangerous.

Make your Keyword folder names very different. BatZ_Night1 and BatZ_Night2 or something. 

In summary- you actually do not need to separate by night if I understand correctly. BUT as an instructional exercise you *can* do it as I have described above. I would recommend trying to set up the keyword thing... but you must also understand why it actually isn't necessary in this particular case.

-the Blockhead