Save/Save as

When you save a file fitlc outputs four seperate files. It outputs a file with a '_phase' suffix, a '_fit' suffix, a '_chi' suffix, and a '_props' suffix. Combined, these four files tell you everything you need to know about a particular fit. The '_phase' file contains the phased light curve. It is an exact copy of the original input file (including any extra columns), except epoch is replaced by phase using the fitted parameters. The '_fit' file contains the fitted templates for each filter. The first column is phase, and each column after that is the magnitude that corresponds to each input filter. Finally, the '_props' file is a one line file containing the actual fitted parameters. The first column is period, the second epoch, and this is followed by 3 columns for each filter. The first column is the fitted amplitude, the second column is the fitted magnitude, and the third column is the mean magnitude. The fitted magnitude is the parameter used for the fit, and represents the middle point between the maximum and minimum of the fitted template. The mean magnitude is calculated by splitting the fitted template into even phase intervals and calculating the mean magnitude across all those points. After all the photometry blocks is another series of columns. These columns are the mean colors, so there are (number of filters - 1) of these columns. Each column is calculated by splitting the relevant fitted templates for each filter into even phase intervals, subtracting the corresponding magnitudes, and taking the mean. Finally, the chi file gives the period-chi relationship for the selected filter. The first column is period, the second column is chi. A chi value of 99.9 means that pikaia failed at that period.

If you just select the save option, fitlc will take the name of the input file as the base filename to save to, and simply append each suffix to the basename. If you choose the save as option, you can pick the basename to use yourself.

Automate

The automate option will allow you to specify a number of input files for fitlc to automatically fit, allowing you visit starbucks at your leisure while still accomplishing something. It asks you for a folder where the input files are located, and a filter so that it only finds valid input files. Then it will load each file, apply the auto-fit routine once, and save the result.

Make Plots

Make plots is intended to be used to create publication worthy plots and to accumulate all the resulting variable star properties into one file. When you select this option, the first thing it asks for is a folder name. This should be the name of the folder that contains all your output files - the '_phase', '_fit', and '_props' files. When you've selected the proper folder, you have to give it a "filter" that it will use to search for '_fit' files. Normally, you probably just want to give it *_fit. That will let it find all the _fit files in the folder and make plots for all your fitted variable stars. If you don't want it to make plots for all the variables, just adjust the filter so that it only finds the ones you want. It also asks you for a settings file. Make Plots has a large number of settings that can change the final look of the plots it creates (go here for the complete list). To make use of these settings, you have to create a separate settings file that only has valid settings in it. Then, use the browse dialog to select the file. I've included an example settings file below. Finally, choose an output file name. This filename is used as a base filename. The postscript file make plots generates will have a '.ps' extension appended to the output file you specify, and the collected variable properties will be written out to: basefile + '_props'

**IMPORTANT**
One very important thing to know is that fitlc uses the file_search procedure in IDL to come up with its list of files to plot. It plots out the files in the order that file_search returns them. By default file_search orders the filenames ascii-betically. At the moment, there is no way to adjust this order. So make sure you are aware of this fact, particularly if you use your own labels.

xr = [0,1]
yr = [27,24]
filtername[0] = 'B'
filtername[1] = 'V'
rows = 5
cols = 3
fileout = 'myplots'
symsize = 1.0
psym[0] = 16
psym[1] = 22
thick = 4
charthick = 4
nocolor
paginate