Telling me ***ERROR: No signal for centroid in aperture T1 of image

[ghawkins]

Either I'm suddenly doing something silly, or something has gone wrong.  I'm seeing the same problem with multiple aperture and DP processing.  I've attached the log file.  I place apertures in the normal way, all images are plate solved, but it's reporting no signal for centroid, which there clearly is! Any ideas?

Log.txt

In previous responses to this question, Karen responded, "Are the images properly calibrated? In other words, does the background happen to have negative values? If so, the centroid will not work. In that case, re-calibrate the images with appropriate bias, and/or darks, and/or flats."

There are some -ve Int Cnts values. However, AIJ is failing to process images it processed yesterday, making me think this is not the problem.

One poster reported solving the problem "I was able to resolve the problem by removing by ~/Library/Preferences/AIJ_Prefs.

This did not solve the problem.

Best regards,

Gary

[karenacollins]

Hi Gary,

There's not enough info here to provide much feedback. Do you see the apertures landing on the stars correctly as the sequence processes? If not, maybe the plate solutions are off on images beyond the first two? If the stars are very faint, the centroiding may not work, but I assume your stars are fairly bright based on other questions from you. Also, make sure you are placing apertures using RA/Dec (in the Multi-aperture setup panel) if your guiding/pointing/tracking were not precise.

Karen

[ghawkins]

Hi Karen,

I'm trying to isolate the problem.  I'm looking again at the images to answer your questions.

I am using RA/Dec to place apertures.

So now, if I import the images, and use Multi Aperture Tool, it seems to be working. Last time I tried the Multiple Aperture Tool failed as well!

If I use the DP, it's failing and displaying the error message above.

The stars are bright (but not saturated), and the apertures are tracking when I start the Multiple Aperture Tool off.

I'll play around a bit more :)

Best regards,

Gary

[ghawkins]

Hi Karen,

I'm still stumped as to what's causing the problem, so I created a short video - https://youtu.be/DW4nu72PEVs.

Best regards,

Gary

[karenacollins]

Thank you for the video Gary. Could you try a couple things as debugging steps that might be helpful to us. Try these one at a time to see if one item makes a difference.

1) Using DP, run a fixed aperture to see if the same problem happens.

2) Using DP, try turning off place by RA/Dec.

3) Using DP, try turning off "Halt Processing on WCS or centroid error".

4) Using DP, try enabling M-plot (below M-Ap).

I noticed the drive you are using for the data is the "D" drive. Is that a local drive in your computer, or a USB drive, or a network drive, or something else?

Karen

[ghawkins]

Hi Karen,

Below are my findings to your questions.

1) Using DP, run a fixed aperture to see if the same problem happens.

DP, Fixed aperture, RA/Dec on, Centroid apertures on, Halt processing on WCS or centroid on:

ERROR - no signal for centroid on first - aborts

2) Using DP, try turning off place by RA/Dec.

DP, Variable aperture, RA/Dec off, Centroid apertures on, Halt processing on WCS or centroid on:

ERROR - no signal for centroid on first image - aborts

3) Using DP, try turning off "Halt Processing on WCS or centroid error".

DP, RA/Dec on, Centroid apertures on, Halt processing on WCS or centroid off:

Processes each image but relative flux values and zero!

3a)

DP, RA/Dec on, Centroid apertures off, Halt processing on WCS or centroid off:

Processes each image but relative flux values are zero!

4) Using DP, try enabling M-plot (below M-Ap).

DP, RA/Dec on, Centroid apertures on, Halt processing on WCS or centroid on:

ERROR - no signal for centroid on first image.

I noticed the drive you are using for the data is the "D" drive. Is that a local drive in your computer, or a USB drive, or a network drive, or something else?

Micro card 256GB

AIJ is clearly centroiding when I manually place the apertures off-center.

[karenacollins]

Thank you for the additional testing, Gary. This is a shot in the dark, but would you try copying the files from the "Micro card 256GB" to your local hard drive to see if the problem persists?

Karen

[ghawkins]

Hi Karen,

Unfortunately, the problem remains.

I'll try uninstalling everything and reinstalling.  See if that solves the problem.

Best regards,

Gary

[karenacollins]

Hi Gary,

I wouldn't expect that would change things, but maybe worth a try. You could also try resetting your preferences through multi-plot Main > File menu.

If that doesn't fix the problem, then we'll need a minimum set of you images that shows the problem to try to duplicate on our end. It sounds like only 2-3 images are needed.

Karen

[ghawkins]

The brute force reinstall approach seems to have solved the problem, but unfortunately, that does not give many cues relating to the problem.  Well, at least it's not the image files.

[karenacollins]

Did you just re-install the code, or did you also reset to default preferences?

Karen

[ghawkins]

Hi Karen,

I deleted everything and then did a new code install. Not my preferred approach, but I was running out of ways to isolate the issue.

Thanks so much to you and other developers' efforts this year with AIJ. I've used the tool in support of the submission of around 30K observations to the AAVSO this year and recommend it to all my students.

Happy New Year.

Gary