Today I finished writing the code to automate the image acquisition and creation of point spread functions (PSFs). The code allows us to take 260 images, 20 at each of 13 exposure times, and average each set of 20 exposures to get rid of noise in each frame. Then, taking this new set of averaged data, we can remove the saturated pixels and get rid of interference from the dark current, and after normalizing the data by dividing each point of information by its correlating exposure time (in seconds), we can map a surface function to the normalized data. We will be doing this several times with different thicknesses of glass between the beam and the sensor, which will allow us to determine the effect of glass (which keeps our Kepler camera in a vacuum chamber) when it interferes with the beam path.
We visited a couple of the other labs on the basement level this morning, and it was really interesting to see what they've been doing. Peter, Ashley, and I wrote a little card for Lee, an REU student who's been really great and who we've gotten to know pretty well, thanking him for everything he's done to help us (he's given me some really helpful advice for programming and debugging), as he's heading back to California tomorrow after the undergraduate research symposium. We're definitely going to miss him.
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