I talked with Tim and Justin about my code. The problem seems to be that in my current program, I am overestimating the amount of background noise since I'm calculating noise by averaging the flux from individual pixels. What I should do instead was to average noise from little regions and calculate the noise from the average of those regions. It seems like I'm just working with slightly bigger pixels, but by first averaging the flux from each region, I am able to smooth out my background and ultimately decrease the noise in each image.
So now, I have to code a different approach to finding point sources. It will still use much of what I have already written, but it's definitely the biggest change yet to my code.
Here's a rough outline of what I'm about to do:
I will partition each annulus into little circular regions of data. I will then average the flux in each region, and then find the standard deviation from the regions. This will be used to create sigma. The background mean will also be calculated from the regions. Detection of a point source apart from the main source will determined by if the a region has an average intensity greater than thresh*sigma. My program might pinpoint the specific location of the point source less precisely, but at least it won't detect fake point sources that turned out to just be speckles. The contrast curve will still be created in much the same way. It's just the way I determine background noise that will change the most significantly.
I'll start working on this next week.
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