COMPUTER ASSISTED PHOTOMETRY USING SIMULATED ANNEALING

Abstract

The computationaltechnique known as simulated annealing, which originally was used to solve problems in combinatiorial optimization, can be quite effectively used to fit functions of many parameters to a set of data. This paper discusses the application of simulated annealing to the fitting of Moffat functions to crowded field star images. Overlapping star profiles can be fit simultaneously and missed stars can be located based on the Xsup2 value of the fit, and the resulting functional model yields excellent photometric results. This method has been integrated into a photometry system which allows the user to select the accuracy of the results at the expense of time needed to perform the calculations.