astrophotography/session-scripts/gaia_colours.py
laurence 5286a2e81b Processing and analysis code for remote-telescope imaging sessions
The scripts that processed the NGC 5128 session of 2026-07-21 previously
lived inside the data directory and addressed it with absolute paths.
Code and data are now separated: the code lives here, and a session is
located at runtime through the ASTRO_SESSION environment variable.

layout.py is what makes that work. It maps a FILENAME to the
subdirectory that file belongs in, using the same rules the session
directories are organised with, so a script can go on asking for
'master-Red.fit' or '_stars.npz' without any call site knowing the
directory structure. Anything unrecognised resolves to the session root,
which is visible and correctable rather than silently wrong.

restructure.py reorganises a flat session directory into that layout. It
is idempotent and dry-run by default.

The 50 session scripts are kept as they were run rather than tidied into
a library. They were written in sequence as the work went along, several
of them by parallel agents, and they show it - but they are the honest
provenance of a published set of results, and the productionised pipeline
should be able to reproduce those results exactly.

Verified before committing: all 51 files compile without warnings, and
verify_core.py, closeup.py and triptych.py were run end to end against
the reorganised session, correctly finding inputs across calibrated/,
stacks/masters/ and final/ and writing outputs back to the right places.
2026-07-21 15:29:49 +01:00

49 lines
1.9 KiB
Python

"""Fetch Gaia DR3 BP-RP colours for the field, cached for colour calibration.
The first composite balanced colour on "the average field star is grey", which
is a workable fudge but is biased by whatever mix of spectral types the field
happens to contain. With real colours available, a much better anchor exists:
pick the stars that actually ARE solar-coloured (BP-RP near 0.82) and force
those to neutral. That is the same principle as a photometric colour
calibration, without needing the filters' response curves.
ESA's archive was down during this work, so this uses the VizieR mirror of the
identical catalogue.
"""
import os
import numpy as np
from astropy import units as u
from astropy.coordinates import SkyCoord
import layout
OUT = layout.SESSION
CACHE = layout.path("_gaia_colours.npz")
CENTRE = SkyCoord("13h25m27.37s", "-43d01m10.9s")
if os.path.exists(CACHE):
z = np.load(CACHE)
print(f"cached: {len(z['ra'])} stars with colours")
else:
from astroquery.vizier import Vizier
v = Vizier(columns=["RA_ICRS", "DE_ICRS", "Gmag", "BP-RP"],
column_filters={"Gmag": "<18", "BP-RP": ">-1"},
row_limit=50000)
res = v.query_region(CENTRE, radius=0.45 * u.deg, catalog="I/355/gaiadr3")
t = res[0]
ok = ~np.isnan(np.asarray(t["BP-RP"], float))
ra = np.asarray(t["RA_ICRS"], float)[ok]
dec = np.asarray(t["DE_ICRS"], float)[ok]
g = np.asarray(t["Gmag"], float)[ok]
bprp = np.asarray(t["BP-RP"], float)[ok]
np.savez_compressed(CACHE, ra=ra, dec=dec, g=g, bprp=bprp)
print(f"fetched {len(ra)} stars with BP-RP")
z = dict(ra=ra, dec=dec, g=g, bprp=bprp)
bprp = z["bprp"]
solar = np.abs(bprp - 0.82) < 0.15
print(f"BP-RP range {bprp.min():.2f} to {bprp.max():.2f}, "
f"median {np.median(bprp):.2f}")
print(f"solar-coloured stars (BP-RP 0.67-0.97): {solar.sum()}")
print(f"G range {z['g'].min():.1f} to {z['g'].max():.1f}")