astropy / astropy/photutils

Tools for calibrating photutils outputs

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feature request utils
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Description

Prompted by the question in #433 (although this has been discussed in various other places), we should develop some functions to do standard sorts of calibrations given the outputs of `photutil`'s aperture and PSF photometry elements.

The way I imagine this working is basically a set of functions that take tables as they are output from the aperture photometry routines or PSF photometry classes, applying various calibrations. The minimal example is something like this:
```python
def calibrate_magnitudes(tab, zeropoint):
tab['cal_mags'] = -2.5*np.log10(tab['flux_fit'])*u.mag + zeropoint
```

But a much wider set of tools are called for, including:
* Take an output table with `SkyCoord`s, and use that to match some standard star catalogs (which might or might not be provided in the package), and use that to estimate photometric zero points
* Use bright stars to do aperture corrections from flux measurements
* Combining *multiple* catalogs from different exposures, matching up objects that are likely the same, and computing the combined magnitudes/uncertainties

These are all quite distinct tasks, but I think we want all of them, at least at some point.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by reading issue #433 and reviewing the aperture-photometry output tables and PSF photometry classes referenced here. The scope needs to be narrowed among magnitude calibration, standard-catalog matching, aperture corrections, and combining catalogs before implementation; done would mean an agreed set of tools with corresponding behavior and tests.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
data
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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