laurence 3f785136ed Bring the state files up to date so a cold session can resume

Rule 2 of the workflow is that state lives in the repo rather than the
chat, and a long session had put most of the current position only in
the chat. This writes it down.

TODO.md gains a RESUME HERE block at the top, because the useful
question for the next session is not what has been done but what to do
next and what is blocking it. It names the three live strands, the three
decisions waiting on the user, and the one thing that will break the
batch run if it is forgotten: NGC 6744 mixes bin1 luminance at 4096x4096
with bin2 colour at 2048x2048, so registration has to resample onto a
common grid. Nothing else in the archive does that, which is exactly why
it will be forgotten. It also drops three duplicate "Done (recent)"
headings that had accumulated, and tabulates what the five archived
sessions actually contain.

NOTES.md gains the gotchas, all of which produced plausible wrong
answers rather than errors: every frame is delivered twice as calibrated
and raw, so extracting both silently doubles the stack; an interrupted
segmented download leaves DIRECTORIES named like files, which defeats
anything that trusts an extension; a re-mirror duplicates rather than
replaces; two T20 archives are genuinely corrupt; extraction triples the
disk footprint and filled the drive. Alongside them the analysis lessons
from NGC 5128, kept for the same reason - each is a way to be confidently
wrong.

DECISIONS.md records why the pipeline reads headers rather than
filenames, and why imaging is being made push-button while the science
stays hand-driven.

ARCHITECTURE.md described a documentation-only repository with no code,
which stopped being true when the pipeline merged in. It now covers all
three parts, the code-and-data separation the pipeline is built around,
and the on-disk session layout.

Both of this session's own errors are recorded in TODO.md as things not
to repeat: measuring a foreground star instead of the galaxy nucleus and
booking telescope time to fix it, and telling the user NGC 6744 had not
been processed when it had.

2026-07-21 17:32:00 +01:00

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Raw Blame History

TODO

The current state of play. Keep it honest and current; this is what the next session reads to know what to do. Move items between sections as they progress.

RESUME HERE - 2026-07-21, end of session

Three strands are live. Each has a clear next action.

1. Generic pipeline - MID-BUILD, this is the active work

Building a push-button pipeline that processes any session, not just LRGB from one telescope. Branch generic-pipeline.

Done: pipeline/session.py - discovery, ingest, header-driven scanning, filter grouping, palette detection (LRGB / RGB / SHO / HOO / MONO), manifest writing. Tested against all five archived sessions.

Next: measure -> register/stack -> solve -> compose -> report, then a run.py orchestrator with resumable stages.

The blocker before any of that: the disk is full (see below).

The known hard part: NGC 6744 mixes bin1 luminance at 4096x4096 with bin2 colour at 2048x2048. Registration must resample onto a common grid rather than assume every frame shares a shape. Nothing else in the archive does this, so it is easy to forget and it will fail loudly when it happens.

2. Three decisions waiting on the user

Where should the image archive live? C: has ~2.6 GB free and the archive is 14 GB after extraction. ~2.4 GB is safely reclaimable (1.69 GB of extracted TIFFs the pipeline never reads, 0.74 GB of mirror-junk duplicates) but that only buys headroom, it does not fix it. The pipeline is location independent via ASTRO_SESSION, so moving the tree costs nothing but a copy. Do not start batch processing until this is resolved - it will fail partway through.
NGC 6744 already has outputs from a different session on 2026-07-20, in T59/NGC6744/20260719/stacked/ under a different naming convention (NGC6744_LRGB_final.png, master_Blue_NGC6744_20260719.fit). Re-process into the new structure, or leave it alone?
T08 NGC 2070 has one frame per filter. No stacking, no outlier rejection possible. Worth an SHO composite anyway, or skip?

3. Drain campaign - runs itself, but needs checking daily

See itelescope/CAMPAIGN.md. Next checkpoints below under "iTelescope".

The archive being processed

Downloads\itelescope\ - five sessions, four telescopes, 2021 to 2026. Frame counts below are AFTER removing the raw/calibrated duplication (see NOTES).

Session	Palette	Frames	Note
T32 NGC 5128	LRGB	12/4/4/4	matches the hand-processed run exactly: a working regression test
T59 NGC 6744	LRGB	15/7/7/7	L bin1 4096², RGB bin2 2048² - mixed grids
T20 IC 1805	Ha only	14	mono; 2 frames lost to corrupt archives
T17 NGC 2030	RGB, no L	3/3/3	only 6 min per channel
T08 NGC 2070	SHO	1/1/1	one 60 s frame per filter

Done - 2026-07-21

Repositories

Merged itelescope + astro-pipeline into astrophotography, both histories preserved (45 commits; git log --follow traces files across the move). Old repos carry redirect notices in README and CLAUDE.md; not archived, because the campaign is live and other sessions work in itelescope most nights. Archive after 12 Aug.

NGC 5128 processed end to end (the reference session)

Lives in Downloads\NGC5128\20260721\, organised into raw/ calibrated/ stacks/ final/ renderings/ science/ intermediates/ with a METHODS.md and a README in each subdirectory. Results:

Plate solve: 237 stars, 0.27 arcsec residual, 0.5376 arcsec/px
Photometry: zero point G = -2.5 log10(flux) + 27.941, scatter 0.164 mag, limiting G ~ 20.7 at SNR 5
Four deliverable images in final/, from raw stack to science-informed, plus a close-up framed by the galaxy's measured extent
Globular clusters: 289 candidates, 179 (62%) catalogue-confirmed, density falling 10.5x outward. A real detection.
Surface photometry: Sersic n = 4.27, Re = 400 arcsec, total G = 6.56 which matches the catalogued value and validates the whole calibration chain. No shells, and the data could never have shown them (systematics-limited, 3 mag short).
Transients/moving objects: two clean nulls with measured limits.

Corrections made (both were Claude's errors - do not repeat them)

The Cen A nucleus was never saturated. A foreground star 69 arcsec from the nucleus was measured instead of the galaxy. A T32 booking made to "fix" it was cancelled before running, costing nothing. Always filter stars out before measuring a core.
NGC 6744 HAD already been processed by another session on 20 Jul, and the user was told otherwise. Check for existing outputs before asserting none exist.

Eclipse plan written

observing/eclipse-2026-menorca/PLAN.md - full field plan.

Pending - pipeline

Finish the stages: measure, register/stack, solve, compose, report, run.py.
Then productionise: staged CLI, each stage resumable, packaged as an Apptainer image. Slurm array jobs only for the expensive stages - measured on NGC 5128, per-frame work is 2.9 s and all 24 frames take 1.1 min single-threaded, so a scheduler buys nothing on stacking. It pays for the Monte Carlo work (completeness and injection-recovery tests, difference imaging, shift-and-stack), which is where compute actually bit.
Must handle beyond mono LRGB: narrowband palettes, one-shot colour with debayering, other observatories' header conventions, and full calibration from bias/dark/flat for sources that do not pre-calibrate.
Three findings from the first session are requirements, not options: vet moving objects in DETECTOR coordinates; carry r50/psf into any catalogue cross-match; never fit a sky background to a field the target fills.
Object-prefixed output naming should be derived from the OBJECT header, not typed in. On a cluster, final-3-best.png is ambiguous the moment there is a second dataset.
Emit the alignment-only stack as a standard artefact of every run. It costs almost nothing and it is the reference every later stage can be diffed against when a processed result looks wrong.

Pending - science (deliberately after the pipeline)

The analyses are per-object and need judgement; they are not push-button. A globular cluster survey suits Centaurus A and is meaningless for the Heart Nebula. Approach these one at a time once the imaging half runs unattended.

Pending - observing

Total solar eclipse, 12 Aug 2026, Menorca. Totality 1m12s at Ciutadella, Sun at 2 degrees, azimuth 288, sunset 20:42. observing/eclipse-2026-menorca/PLAN.md has the full plan.
- ORDER THE CERTIFIED SOLAR FILTER. Only item with no substitute.
- Practise on a low sunset to calibrate exposures for the extreme extinction.
- Outstanding: tailor the exposure table once the A7 body and lenses are known.

Pending - iTelescope

CrA on T8 ran 11:45-14:45 UTC 22 Jul. Verify images under /images/qisback/T8/ on t8.itelescope.net:8008, then put the actual bill from account/history.aspx into the ledger. First T8 bill, so it fixes T8's effective rate (card says 130/hr; trust nothing until observed).
T33 first-light test on its third booking (749314, ran 14:05 UTC 21 Jul). If it failed again, stop rebooking: either walk it in (POST plan.asp per itelescope/plans/README.md) or drop the free-imaging objective.
Campaign: 541 of 2,638 points spent, 2,097 remain, all to be gone by 10 Aug with cancellation before the 12 Aug renewal (user confirmation required for the cancel itself). On current numbers the campaign under-spends by ~800 - plan extra or longer runs, do not trim.
Download all data from data.itelescope.net before the 10 Aug sweep.
Automation: map ACP endpoints per scope; explore lookup.itelescope.online; enumerate more /DataService.svc methods.
Fill in T74 when specs are published; reconcile retired scopes T9, T19, T31, T69; periodically re-export the specs sheet and diff against itelescope/data/.

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