starting multi-aperture photometry

[awmeyer]

Just starting to get acquainted with AstroimageJ.  Import a sequence of  FITS images of a star field, astronomy tool button clicked, click multi-aperture, all the options in that menu set to suitable values.  Moving mouse over image I see the several concentric circles in blue centered on a crosshair, representing central aperture and sky annulus.  Left click on a star image, expecting to see a red circle as the manual says, but nothing appears.  And no drawn circle appears after any subsequent clicks elsewhere (manual predicts green circles).  Have tried Image - Overlay - Show Overlay, changing line thickness and colors in Edit - Options, no luck.   Measurements do appear in a "Log" window if I click the mouse center wheel, but no aperture of any color appears whether either mouse button clicked, or wheel clicked.  Only wheel click produces line of measurement data text.
Our FITS images are not visible unless I select Image - Type - 32-bit, then the stack gets re-scaled.  Tried the 16-bit sample image of M51, same result i.e. measurement data text but no drawn apertures where mouse clicked.

[karenacollins]

Another user reported a similar problem, and it turned out that the "DATE-OBS" format in the FITS header was different from what is expected by AIJ. The expected format is "2013-01-27T00:39:54". If the format is something like "22/03/99", aperture photometry will hang and nothing happens when you attempt to do photometry. I have this as a high priority bug fix request, but it may be another week before I can provide a fix.

So that I can verify that this is your problem, can you post a copy of your FITS header?

If your DATE-OBS format doesn't match the above, for now you can completely remove the DATE-OBS entry from the headers of your FITS file and photometry should then work. You can do that by opening the image, then open the FITS header editor ,  and then highlight the DATE-OBS line with the mouse, click the "DELETE" button, and then the "SAVE FILE" button as shown in the screen grab below. NOTE: be sure to do a SAVE FILE rather than a SAVE which just saves the new header to AIJ memory, but not to disk.

[Allan Meyer]

After some browsing here saw another thread that sounded similar, and you had suggested version update.  Did so, now have 2.1.3, but that didn't fix problem.
Here's an original FITS header, with the suspect DATE-OBS as you expected.  Below that after making a copy of the entire FITS image file, and editing that line out using AIJ.  Then closed the copied edited file & re-opened

Original header:
SIMPLE  =                    T / standard conforming (constant T)              
BITPIX  =                   16 / bits per pixel (constant 16 for current imagers
NAXIS   =                    2 / number of axes                                
NAXIS1  =                 1024 / image width                                    
NAXIS2  =                 1024 / image height                                  
ORIGIN  = 'SOFIA   '           / Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronom
DATE    = '2013-07-24T13:35:32.985Z' / When image was created by TA            
HISTORY   Extracted from ARK file: fpi_node_b.ta_fpi.130724133436.ark          
FILENAME= 'FPI.20130724T133532.985Z.fits' / file name (Imager.Time.fits)        
OBSERVAT= 'SOFIA   '           / Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronom
TELESCOP= 'SOFIA   '           / 2.5 meter telescope                            
IMAGTYP = 'CCD_IMAGE'          / image type ('CCD_IMAGE', 'DRKFLD' or 'FLTFLD')
INSTRUME= 'FPI     '           / 'FPI', 'FFI' or 'WFI'                          
DATE-OBS= '2013-07-24'         / date of exposure start                        
UTCSTART= '13:35:29.510Z'      / UTC of exposure start                          
UTCEND  = '13:35:32.010Z'      / UTC of exposure finish                        
EXPTIME =                  2.5 / seconds                                        
BINNING = '1x1     '           / pixel grouping (='1x1', '2x2' or '4x4')        
PIXBITS =                   14 / ADC bits (=8, 14 or 16)                        
DATAMAX =                16383 / detector full well maximum (=2^PIXBITS - 1)    
DATAMIN =                    0 / smallest value from detector                  
IMAGE_SN=                33170 / image id (WFI: 1XXXX, FFI: 2XXXX,FPI: 3XXXX)  
IMAGUSE = 'NORMAL  '           / Image usage                                    
FILTPOS = 'FILTER_ND3'         / filter position                                
FOCLEN  = '5257.0347'          / focal len of camera optics (mm) (100 to 100000)
KWDICT  = 'DCS SI 01 A'        / conforms with DCS keyword dictionary version  
FPIFOCUS= '39.3818 '           / focus pos (mm) (-300 to 300) -1000 unknown)    
FPIRETCL= '-1.0000 '           / reticle brtnes (0.0 to 1.0, or -1 if undef)
_________________________________________________________________

After removing DATE-OBS line from copy of file, saving, closing & re-opening:

SIMPLE  =                    T / Created by ImageJ FITS_Writer                  
BITPIX  =                   16 / number of bits per data pixel                  
NAXIS   =                    2 / number of data axes                            
NAXIS1  =                 1024 / length of data axis 1                          
NAXIS2  =                 1024 / length of data axis 2                          
ORIGIN  = 'SOFIA   '           / Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronom
DATE    = '2013-07-24T13:35:32.985Z'              / When image was created by TA
HISTORY Extracted from ARK file: fpi_node_b.ta_fpi.130724133436.ark            
FILENAME= 'FPI.20130724T133532.985Z.fits'         / file name (Imager.Time.fits)
OBSERVAT= 'SOFIA   '           / Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronom
TELESCOP= 'SOFIA   '                                       / 2.5 meter telescope
IMAGTYP = 'CCD_IMAGE'           / image type ('CCD_IMAGE', 'DRKFLD' or 'FLTFLD')
INSTRUME= 'FPI     '                                     / 'FPI', 'FFI' or 'WFI'
UTCSTART= '13:35:29.510Z'                                / UTC of exposure start
UTCEND  = '13:35:32.010Z'                               / UTC of exposure finish
EXPTIME = 2.5                                                          / seconds
BINNING = '1x1     '                   / pixel grouping (='1x1', '2x2' or '4x4')
PIXBITS = 14                                           / ADC bits (=8, 14 or 16)
DATAMAX = 16383                    / detector full well maximum (=2^PIXBITS - 1)
DATAMIN = 0                                       / smallest value from detector
IMAGE_SN= 33170                   / image id (WFI: 1XXXX, FFI: 2XXXX,FPI: 3XXXX)
IMAGUSE = 'NORMAL  '                                               / Image usage
FILTPOS = 'FILTER_ND3'                                         / filter position
FOCLEN  = '5257.0347'          / focal len of camera optics (mm) (100 to 100000)
KWDICT  = 'DCS SI 01 A'           / conforms with DCS keyword dictionary version
FPIFOCUS= '39.3818 '               / focus pos (mm) (-300 to 300) -1000 unknown)
FPIRETCL= '-1.0000 '               / reticle brtnes (0.0 to 1.0, or -1 if undef)
END                                                                            

stll nothing appears after right mouse clicks on image.  Trying either aperture photometry tool or multiple aperture tool enabled.  

[karenacollins]

This DATE-OBS format and the UTCSTART and TAITIME keywords are now supported by AIJ. Furthermore, unsupported time KEYWORDS and formats will not cause Aperture to hang. These fixes are in the daily build now posted to the update site and will be in any releases 2.1.4 and later.