JV's+Milestone+Report+(Step+3)

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Milestone Report Step 3 (Step 3. Take the FITS files to CCDOps and remove warm and cold pixels/Average images into four images)

First before trying to complete this milestone you want to make sure that you have the CCDOps program. This program is available at [|www.SBIG.com]. Once you have the program you will want to open your image and remove the warm and cold pixels from the images. Warm pixels are pixels that show up as white specs against a black surface and cold pixels are pixels that show up as black spec when placed against a white surface. These are not necessary to your images and by removing them you will improve the clarity of you images. Before you remove the pixels you should open and keep track of which images you are using. I suggest only opening images of the same filter at the same time. This will keep you from becoming confused. The process to remove the pixels is as follows:

1. Go to “Utility” on the toolbar, scroll down to “Filter Utilities” and then click “Remove Cold Pixels.” (Image taken from the How to Astroimage Document)

2. Then a “Filter Strength” box will appear, you want it to be on the medium setting. (Image taken from the How to Astroimage Document)

3. Follow the same steps as “Step 1” above but instead click on “Kill Hot Pixels” instead of “Remove Cool Pictures.” Use the same filter strength, this is what it will look like after you’ve done this. (Image taken from the How to Astroimage Document) Next you want to average the images into four images of each filter (Red, Green, Blue, and Luminance). To do this: 1.) Click “Utility” (Image taken from the How to Astroimage Document) 2.) Click on “Average Images” 3.) Once you have clicked on “Average Images” an "open file box" will show up. You want to open an image, for example your first Red image. 4.) Once you have done that the “open files box” will show up again and you want to open another image of the same filter. You want to continue doing this for all the images of the Red filter. Then you should have one Red image of three combined Red images. 5.) Continue to do this for all the other filters (Green, Blue, and Luminance). The result should be four images Red, Green, Blue, and Luminance. Once you are done with this you want to save the averaged images as TIFF files so you can use them in Photoshop.

To Step 4:click here