Object Search and Classification

This chapter describes the use of commands which produce an inventory of astronomical objects present in an analysed two dimensional image. The end product is a list of objects classified as stars or galaxies and containing also parameters such as various kinds of magnitudes, sizes, some characteristics of image shapes, and optionally also cleaned one-dimensional image profiles. These commands taken together constitute what is known as the INVENTORY program. They belong to the INVENT context which can be activated with the help of the command: SET/CONTEXT INVENT. The programs described here were developed by A. Kruszewski during several visits to ESO in the last years. Most of the documentation below was written by him and has only slightly been modified since then. Users are kindly asked to refer all detected inconsistencies of the implementation of the package in MIDAS to the ESO-Image Processing Group.

*** IMPORTANT NOTE ***

The default MIDAS implementation of the INVENTORY allows for a maximum 16384 objects in SEARCH and ANALYSE commands and 32768 detections in the SEARCH command. The commands will issue a warning message if these bounderies are exceeded. On the other hand, since INVENTORY only uses fixed arrays sizes, these numbers can be too large on small memory-sized systems. In case of problems the parameters can be modified in the INVENTORY include file. They are called located MAXCNT and MAXDET, respectively, and and are located in the file /midas/$MIDVERS/contrib/invent/incl/invent.inc. If you encounter problems with these settings please consult your local MIDAS responsible for adjusting them.