MCATMAP(1)

💫 MCATMAP(1) — the Montage manual page, bestie edition 💫

okay so. you opened the manual for mCatMap and honestly? slay. it's the Montage point-source imaging girlie, and she's here to turn your table of little glowing dots into an actual image. let's get into it. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

mCatMap — Point-source imaging program 🦋

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

mCatMap [-c column] [-m refmag] [-d level] [-w size] in.tbl out.fits
hdr.template

like. that's the whole vibe. table in, FITS out. 💅

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so mCatMap is a point-source imaging program, periodt. here's the tea: you define a general output FITS image, and then its pixels get populated from a table of point sources. the source fluxes (or, honestly, just the source counts, we don't judge) from that table get added into the appropriate pixel to create your output image. it's giving pixel-by-pixel glow-up. 🌟

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -c column — the name of the table column that holds your flux levels. if you don't specify it, no cap, the pixels get populated with source counts instead of summed flux values. choose your fighter. 🫶
• -m refmag — sets a reference magnitude to use when calculating fluxes. iconic for when you need a lil baseline. ⭐
• -d level — turns on debugging to the specified level (1-3). main character debugging energy only. 🔥
• -w size — sets a spread size for point sources (default is to use no spread, so like, they stay tiny and crisp). allowed values are 3 or 5. that's it, those are the only two, don't try anything else bestie 😭

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✨ ARGUMENTS ✨

• in.tbl — input table of source metadata. your raw material. the ingredients. 🍓
• out.fits — path of output FITS file. where the magic lands. ✨
• hdr.template — ASCII header template defining the output FITS file. this is the blueprint, the vision board, the layout. 🎀

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✨ RESULT ✨

[struct stat="OK", time=seconds]

she tells you it worked and how long she took. humble of her. 💜

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✨ MESSAGES ✨

• OK → [struct stat="OK", time=seconds] — we love a success story 🌈
• ERROR → Can't open input table in.tbl — she could not find your table, tragic 💀
• ERROR → Can't find column 'ra' — no ra column bestie, we need coordinates 😭
• ERROR → Can't find column 'dec' — same energy, but for dec 🙈
• ERROR → Can't find column 'column' — the column you asked for with -c is simply not there 🫠
• ERROR → Output wcsinit() failed — the WCS setup did not slay 😔
• ERROR → Template file not found — your header template ghosted you 👻

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✨ EXAMPLES ✨

say you wanna create an image showing the 2MASS point source fluxes (2mass_pt.tbl) in a 2 square degree area defined by 2mass_pt.hdr. here's exactly how:

mCatMap -c flux 2mass_pt.tbl 2mass_pt.fits 2mass_pt.hdr
       [struct stat="OK", time=4]

Output image:

(yes, that's literally it — the manual just says "Output image:" and leaves you to admire it 🦋)

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✨ BUGS ✨

the drizzle algorithm has been implemented but has not been tested in this release. so like. it's there. it's untested. proceed accordingly. 💀

if a header template contains carriage returns (i.e., created/modified on a Windows machine), the cfitsio library will be unable to read it properly, resulting in the error:

[struct stat="ERROR", status=207, msg="illegal character in keyword"]

ngl that one is a whole mood killer. 😭

also, it is best for the background correction algorithms if the area described in the header template completely encloses all of the input images in their entirety. if parts of input images are "chopped off" by the header template, the background correction will be affected. we recommend you use an expanded header for the reprojection and background modeling steps, returning to the originally desired header size for the final coaddition. the default background matching assumes that there are no non-linear background variations in the individual images (and therefore in the overlap differences). if there is any uncertainty in this regard, it's safer to turn on the "level only" background matching (the -l flag in mBgModel). lowkey important, highkey a warning. ⚠️

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✨ COPYRIGHT ✨

2001-2015 California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California

if your research uses Montage, please include the following acknowledgement, fr fr:

"This research made use of Montage. It is funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number ACI-1440620, and was previously funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Earth Science Technology Office, Computation Technologies Project, under Cooperative Agreement Number NCC5-626 between NASA and the California Institute of Technology."

The Montage distribution includes an adaptation of the MOPEX algorithm developed at the Spitzer Science Center. 🛰️💖

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okay that's the whole page bestie, you ate. this was Montage 5, dated Dec 2016, and the manual name is MCATMAP(1) — go make some pixels pop, you've got this 👑✨