Today I am continuing to try to get some results out of dolphot, doing some error-hopping (where I resolve one error then find the next error) This process continues until the program runs out of errors at which point it works successfully. For a while, I was editing the wrong make_dolparam.py file so when I ran what I thought was the new file it wasn’t actually a new one at all, so I kept getting the same exact error. Now the program is no longer giving me the ‘images not found’ error, it is rather giving me an error that takes about ten minutes to happen (since the program copies all of the files into the working directory). I am modifying the program to only load one file to identify the errors more quickly. Once I deal with the errors that occur when loading one file, hopefully loading all of the files will work.

I have corrected a few errors now with the new pydolphot only loading one file. I am now copying the dolphot shell scripts from dolphot to the NGC6819 folder so that pydolphot knows where they are. The pydolphot readme didn’t explicitly state where dolphot should be to work, but I am assuming it needs to be in the working directory which is currently NGC6819. I also changed out three lines of code in make_dolparam which terminal told me were deprecated (changed clobber=true to overwrite=true). This reminds me of Dr. Jorge Moreno’s seminar on questioning the violent terms scientists use to describe Galactic interactions. I wonder if clobber was abandoned for a similar reason.

Ok, the error-hopping continues. I realize now I need the dolphot ACS module. I downloaded it and need to run makefile to create the shell scripts. Then I believe I will put bin into the NGC6819 folder and the commands may work. For now, I have to go paint for a few hours. I will probably not be able to get back to this after painting, so for now, I have to wait until tomorrow.

Today has gone pretty well. I am hoping to make significant progress tomorrow morning once I get the new dolphot and can run it with my one test image.