[AstroPy] Help with python image processing problem

[Peter Berrett]

Hi all

I am new to this list and was hoping someone could help me with a programming problem.

I am writing a program in python to find sungrazer comets in soho telsescope c2 images. Normally they are pretty easy to find just by looking at processed images but finding these comets is pretty competitive to the point where comet-hunters now download raw images from the lasco archives in FITS format and process them themselves in order to gain minutes, and sometimes seconds advantage.

So if I am going to compete effectively I will need some software to do the same.

The images 1024 x 1024 are stored in .fts format on a server I can access. What I need is a python script to make a masterflat from the batch of available images and then another to subtract the masterflat from the image being processed. Would anyone have some python scripts that have already been prepared and can do this? I have looked at various image handling libraries to do this but they either lack documentation or are a bit difficult to work with for fits files.

I'd be grateful for any help anyone can provide.

Sample images can be seen at 

ftp://lasco6.nascom.asa.gov/asco/lastiage/level_05/130514/c2/
   

Basically I want to process these images and be able to turn them into processed gif or bmp files within a few seconds after a new file is added to the directory.

Thanking you

Peter Berrett




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