Phoranso provides several options through which you can control its report generation. To access these options select Report Settings from the Photometry menu in the Phoranso menu bar. You will see this dialog box:



It consists of 5 sections: Reporting format, Time format, Reject observations, CBA header and Comment to be added.


  1. Reporting format


Phoranso  generates photometric reports in AAVSO (Extended File), CBA, Excel, and CSV format. Select the corresponding boxes to make your choice(s). 

The CBA format uses a header which contains information about the observer, his location, equipment, etc. Enter your own header information in the CBA header text box.

The option Concatenate all AAVSO Reports into a single file merges all individual AAVSO Reports from a Photometry run into a single file, ready for submission to the AAVSO. All individual AAVSO report files are automatically removed.



  1. Time format

    Phoranso generates photometric reports with a choice of 3 time units:

    • JD: Julian Day

    • HJD: Heliocentric Julian Day

    • BJD_TT: Barycentric Julian Day in Terrestial Time. Note that BJD_TT takes into account that the Earth is not orbiting around the center of the Sun, but around the barycenter of the solar system. It also takes into account the decrease in Earth's rotation speed, expressed through leap seconds. 

      The number of leap seconds for years till end of 2020 are known by Phoranso. For years after 2020, you have to enter the amount of leap seconds elapsed since 1972 in the Leap sec since 1972 field. At the time of this writing (November 2023), the number of leap seconds since 1972 is 37. This value can be obtained here.



  1. Reject observations

    This section allows to refine the selection of observations that will be retained by Phoranso for producing photometric reports. By selecting the appropriate check boxes, Phoranso will exclude observations as follows:

    • Eccentricity:  is a measure used by Phoranso to express how circular a star appears in a FITS image. A perfectly circular star will have an eccentricity of 0, while increasingly elongated or stretched stars have higher eccentricity values approaching 1. It is a useful metric for assessing the quality of an image, and allows to reject photometry for highly trailed stars, i.e. when the Star eccentricity value is higher than the value entered in the Star flatness text box. 

    • ADU: each sensor has a maximum ADU value it can record before saturation occurs. This value is often referrred to as the saturation level or full well capacity. The value is typically provided by your camera manufacturer. E.g., a 16-bit camera has a maximum ADU of 65.536. It is essential to avoid saturation in photometry as it can lead to inaccurate measurements of a star's brightness. Enter the ADU value in the text box and all observations corresponding with a higher ADU will be rejected by Phoranso. 

    • SNR: is a measure used to assess the quality of a detected star in comparison to the background noise present in your image. Phoranso allows you to set a minimum SNR threshold for observations to avoid rejection. The AAVSO suggests maintaining a minimum SNR value within the range of 10 to 20. Achieving a photometric accuracy of 0.02 mag requires a minimum SNR of 50. Using a too small SNR value may result in the inclusion of background noise in your image measurements. 



  1. CBA header

    See Reporting format above.



  1. Comment to be added

    The value you enter in this text box will be added as a comment (or note) to each observation line in an AAVSO report. It allows you for instance to indicate that observations have been obtained during a night with strong moonlight interference.




IMPORTANT

If the Allow fainter-than observations option in the Photometry Settings dialog box is checked, the SNR restriction will only apply to the Reference star and Check star(s). Said differently: if the target star's SNR is below the restriction value, but the Reference and Check star(s) have a SNR value above the restriction, then the observation will be considered valid and will be included in the Photometric Reports.