4.7 Interactive Analysis

After running the automatic fitting procedure on the time history of all pixels making up a raster, the interactive analysis of automatic fitting results is carried out, looking in detail at critical portions of the time history. Essentially, this means that fitting failures and detected sources above certain thresholds are visually examined one by one. In the former case, the likely reason for the fitting failure is identified, while in the latter the reliability of the detected source is assessed. When needed, interactive modifications to the data and/or to the model's parameters are applied, and fitting is carried out again.

The details of the interactive analysis process need to be tuned to the quality of the specific raster under consideration. In particular, the choice of thresholds in interactive checks is closely related with observing parameters such as the exposure time but also with the varying frequency and severeness of cosmic ray impacts. Generally speaking, more careful checks could be profitably carried out on intrinsically higher-quality data. On the other hand, it is desirable to ensure the uttermost uniformity in data reduction.

The sometimes massive work of interactive analysis is carried out with an easy-to-use IDL widget-based Graphical User Interface, a screenshot of which is shown in Figure 4.7, which allows any kind of operation that could be necessary: data visualization and browsing, glitch addition and correction, time history masking and re-fitting. Such software is actually one of the main factors allowing the increase in the volume and quality of the obtained catalogues with respect to the original LARI Method presented by Lari (2001).

Figure 4.7: A screenshot of the IDL widget-based Graphical User Interface used to carry out interactive analysis.