Development of Photometric Data Pipeline in IDL

Abstract

This project develops an algorithm for the Data Pipeline in IDL. Series of images observed in a single night or over many nights are processed. And the variations in the stars magnitude during the period of observation are identified.

In the first part of the project the starting steps to identify the stars randomly from an image are performed. The language used to develop the algorithm is IDL. The prime aim of data pipeline is to detect photometric variability in stars that could be due to various astronomical reasons.

Initially the densely populated images are used. For the images chosen the stars are identified with their pixel position. Next their magnitudes are calculated. This experiment has been repeated for a few images to check the compatibility of program with different images.

Finally a series of image is used as input to this program. The stars and their magnitudes are identified. And also the variations among these stars are identified.