How To Reduce Video Recordings of Asteroid Occultations Using PyOTE

 

I assume you have PyOTE installed, and LiMovie also installed. So this is just a refresher cookbook on reducing events in case it's been too many months and you've forgotten the steps.

* After copying your video into your computer as an .avi file, open LiMovie, and do the steps of photometry to generate a LiMovie lightcurve, saved as a .csv file

* On your desktop, click on the PyOTE icon. It'll pop up a black cmd.com screen for a few moments, and then you'll see the PyOTE analysis screen

* Click box saying Use Curve and to the right, usually you'll use curve 3 (the comparison star) for normalization

* Click Block Integrate unless you didn't use integration. It'll automatically find the best block size and offset and present them. Then click Accept Integration

* Now mouse on the light curve and click a point before the D and then another point inside the occultation. You'll see two red dots now. Click Mark D
* Now mouse on the light curve and click a point inside the occultation, and then another past the occultation. Click Mark R

* Now click Find Event and it should draw a fit light curve through your points.

* Then click Write Report. In lower right, it'll have the information you need; the 1-sig, 2-sig, and 3-sig error bars and the D and R times.

* Use OccultWatcher to click on your event and right click and select Make out your report and follow instructions. It'll pop up Excel and pre-fill and you then fill in the rest. Don't try to enter the green lines; it'll automatically fill in the timings corrected according to your camera and integration setting.
Note that when you fill in the timings PyOTE found you MUST go chronologically backwards, starting at end observing, then the uncorrected R line, then the uncorrected D line, then the start time. The reason is that there's built-in error checking and the pre-filled zeros in the time fields screws it up thinking those were yours and it freezes the ability to put in times. You have to 'save' and then re- 'open' and do like I say.