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Stan, AIP4WIN as delivered with the textbook is what I would consider "beta-test" in quality. It is unfortunate but true in the publishing world that publication deadlines do not always permit extensive testing. In reality, after several thousand users try every feature in every conceivable way, bugs will be discovered/fixed and new features requested/implemented. The current AIP4WIN version is 4.23. For example, the complaint discussed earlier about the lack of adjustable inner and outer radii for the sky aperture was taken care of in versions 1.3.6 and 1.3.9, a long time ago, so it was obvious that the poster had not looked at AIP4WIN in quite a while and therefore was giving people an erroneous impression regarding the current capability of the software. AIP makes it clear that you should go to the website to get the latest version. All software undergoes updates. When you have complaints, you need to indicate what version you were using and if possible post an image and all settings so that others can see if your complaints are valid. You should not "bad-mouth" a product on an open maillist; go to the specific maillist for the product in question and try to get help, either in understanding how you are misusing the product, or in getting the bug fixed. You can test much of the quality of photometry algorithms yourself by taking several images of differing exposure length and seeing how well faint objects on the shorter exposure images match up with their longer-exposure measures. Or, take a 1x1 binned image and software bin it down in size, and compare the photometry with different aperture sizes on both. Or, take images during darktime and full moon and see how much influence a bright sky background makes. Experiment and find the limits of both your software and hardware. DAOPHOT and its derivatives are very good; I use them heavily. On the other hand, the advantages of most commercial software are a better user interface, availability on different operating systems or for different camera formats, dedicated support and maillists, and more integrated features such as image processing and report sending. No one complains about software that makes analysis easier! Arne Stan Walker wrote: > Hi Arne, > > I was a little surprised by your reference to 'using the latest version' in > this context. Does this imply that earlier versions were less than reliable? > > My own experiences with AIP4WIN have been less than satisfactory. The CBA > circulated a book in which this came as an included disc with a > recommendation that this might be a standard CBA reduction package. But I > couldn't get the programme to run in any useful manner. Many images it > rejected, others close to the edge it wouldn't look at. Compared to the > DAOPHOT derivative, MUNIDOS, that I was using at the time it appeared very > poor. Perhaps the disc was faulty but where is the quality checking? At that > time I had also been offered a couple of other reduction packages also > written by amateurs, or people with little experience in the field. All > seemed much less effective when compared to MUNIDOS. > > Perhaps AIP has improved in later versions. But can it yet be compared to > software produced by professionals at a major observatory where the > performance was subjected to extensive practical checking by people working > in the field? DAOPHOT has extensive documentation and apparently the source > code is available - see TK's comments about complexity. AIP was presumably > written to take advantage of a commercial opportunity and is still, if your > comments are correct, being developed. > > Perhaps none of this matters in reality as most users are doing unfiltered > photometry in which the 'errors' arising from other sources probably > outweigh any faults in these newer software reduction packages. No two CCDs > are alike and scale factors and zero point corrections are essential if two > datasets are compared. > > Perhaps an ideal solution would have been if the AIP people had built their > more user friendly? package around DAOPHOT? >
Return to the Powerful Daisaku Nogami
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