! Montage User Documentation

mMakeImg

Description:
Generates synthetic FITS images, with varying levels of noise, from a table of provided point sources. Each source is treated independently and its flux is distributed on a source-specific point-spread function.
Syntax:
mMakeImg [-d level] [-n noise_level] [-b bg1 bg2 bg3 bg4] [-t tbl col width epoch mag] template.hdr out.fits

Switches:

-d level
Turns on debugging to the specified level (1-4).
-n noise_level
Specified random noise equal to noise_level will be added to image background.
-b bg1 bg2 bg3 bg4
Specifies the four corners for a 'tilted' background for the image. Each value is a floating point number specifying the background height at the corner.
-f
Use uniform flat disk for sources rather than gaussians.
-r
Replace pixel values rather than adding to them.
-t tbl col width epoch mag
Specifies a table of sources to be added to the raw image. tbl is the table filename, col is the column name which contains the source fluxes, width is a floating point number determining the point spread of each source, epoch is the coordinate system reference year, and mag is the reference magnitude of the source list. In addition, the source table should have ra and dec columns for the image positions.
Several input tables can be specified if desired through repeated use of the -t flag and arguments.

Arguments:

template.hdr
FITS header template, used to indicate the desired parameters of the output image
out.fits
Path of FITS image to be generated.
Results:
Synthetic FITS output image; sources in image will represent the values from the input table(s).

Examples:

$ mMakeImg -n 0.01 -b 0 1.0 1.0 0 -t sources.tbl J_MAG 5.0 2000 10.0 template.hdr out.fits
[struct stat="OK"]

Return Codes:

  • [struct stat="OK"]
  • [struct stat="ERROR", msg="Usage: mMakeImg [-d level] [-n noise_level] [-b bg1 bg2 bg3 bg4] [-t tbl col width epoch mag] template.hdr out.fits (-t args can be repeated)"]
  • [struct stat="ERROR", msg="Can't open table table tbl"]
  • [struct stat="ERROR", msg="Can't find lon, lat columns"]
  • [struct stat="ERROR", msg="Can't find flux/magnitude column 'col'"]
  • [struct stat="ERROR", msg="Template file [template.hdr] not found"]
  • [struct stat="ERROR", msg="Output wcsinit() failed. Exiting."]
  • [struct stat="ERROR", flag="FITS error code, msg="FITS library error"]