Z Knight W.M. Keck Observatories Research Supervisor: Al Conrad Home Institution: University of Hawai'i at Hilo A Graphical User Interface for NIRC2 Asteroid Data Reduction Akamai Big Island Internship Student Symposium July 29, 2005

The Problem: Lots of Data Hundreds of asteroid images Data needs to be reduced –Remove Instrument Systematics –Remove Background Data Reduction –Divide by Flat Field –Subtract Background –Remove hot pixels –Deconvolve

How to Reduce Data IDL : Interactive Data Language Asteroid = readfits(‘n0002.fits’) Sky = readfits(‘sky.fits’) Asteroid = Asteroid - Sky Surface, Asteroid Surf = tvrd() Write_jpeg, ‘surface.jpeg’, Surf

A Faster Way: GUI A Graphical User Interface (GUI) is easier to use than text commands. NRX Asteroid is a program for reduction of NIRC2 images of asteroids

Design Considerations Automatic processing and modular functionality Multi-platform support: Windows & UNIX How to create a Background Sky frame? What to do with Hot pixels? Create FITS files of reduced data Generate Web pages with surface plots

NRX Asteroid Build a Background Sky Divide by Flat Subtract Sky Smooth Hot Pixels Save FITS Shift and Add Create surface plot Create Web Page Make a Movie

Conclusions Reducing data with text commands takes too long. NRX Asteroid is a quick and easy way to reduce NIRC2 asteroid data and share it with others. Thanks to: –Center for Adaptive Optics –Al Conrad –W.M. Keck Observatories –University of Hawai’i at Hilo – Acknowledgement: This project is supported by the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Adaptive Optics, managed by the University of California at Santa Cruz under cooperative agreement No. AST