photPARTY: Python Automated Square-Aperture Photometry

Abstract

As CCD’s have drastically increased the amount of information recorded per frame, so too have they increased the time and effort needed to sift through the data. For observations of a single star, information from millions of pixels needs to be distilled into one number: the magnitude. Various computer systems have been used to streamline this process over the years. The CCDPhot photometer, in use at the Kitt Peak 0.9-m telescope in the 1990’s, allowed for user settings and provided real time magnitudes during observation of single stars. It is this level of speed and convenience that inspired the development of the Python-based software analysis system photPARTY, which can quickly and efficiently produce magnitudes for a set of single- star or un-crowded field CCD frames. Seeking to remove the need for manual interaction after initial settings for a group of images, photPARTY automatically locates stars, subtracts the background, and performs square-aperture photometry. Rather than being a package of available functions, it is essentially a self-contained, one-click analysis system, with the capability to process several hundred frames in just a couple of minutes. Results of comparisons with present systems such as IRAF are presented.