AIPImport is a simple tool used to display and analyse time series photometry produced by AIP4Win. It is designed to ease the work associated with these files, and to give a more detailed look at the data than AIP4Win does. You can plot charts of the variable and the check star, smooth the light curve, and merge several AIP files. It also saves the data in AAVSO or CBA format, and exports an image of the charts to the clipboard.

Go to the bottom of this page to download

How to use it

Load the AIP file by choosing Open AIP File from the File menu and browse to the file you want to use. Note that you need to include JD in the AIP file for it to work. The main charts shows a plot of v - c and k - c, while two extra diagrams shows k - c and SNR of v. If you don't want k - c in the same graph as v - c, uncheck "Include check star".

AIPImport also supports AIP V2.x formats, as long as only a single comp star is used (or more precisely two comp stars where one of them acts as a check star). For V2 files the main chart shows v - ens and c1 - c2, while the two other charts are c1 - c2 and v1 - c2. SNR is not available.

If your observing run consists of several AIP files, you can merge them by the click of a button. After opening the first file as described above, choose Append AIP File from the File menu and browse for the next AIP file. You can merge as many files as you like by repeating this procedure. Note that you should start with the file containing the earliest observations, then append the file with the observations following those in the first file and so on.

You can delete single observations by pressing the CTRL key and simultaneously clicking on the observation that you want to delete.

You can click on individual data points in the v - c chart to see certain info for that particular measurement. The k - c data can be shifted up and down by changing "Check Position Offset".

Click the "Clipboard" button to copy the v - c chart to the clipboard. The resulting picture can be pasted into most Windows applications.

Smoothing the data

You can smooth the graph in several ways:

• Binning: The first N observations are averaged into a single "bin" with time equal to the mean JD of the observations. The next bin consists of the following N observations, and so on. This reduces the number of data points in the light curve by (approximately) D / N, where D is the number of data points in the original dataset. You specify N in the box next to the radio button.

• Moving Average: The first N observations are averaged and centred on the mean JD. Then this "window" is shifted one observation to the right to produce the next average, and so on. You specify N in the box next to the radio button. This reduces the number of data points by N.

• Exponential Smoothing: Let S(i) be the i'th smoothed data point, and X(i) observation i. S(i) is calculated as S(i) = a*X(i-1) + (1-a)*Xi, where a is the damping factor. The damping factor must be between 0 and 1. Default is 0.3. This simple algorithm can be quite efficient, and it does not reduce the number of observations.

Export

You can save the data in two formats. The AAVSO format will produce a tab separated text file with three columns: JD, magnitude and error. The error is as specified in the "Error" text box, which by default is the standard deviation of the check star (k - c). The error value is user changeable. The CBA format produces a tab separated text file with columns for truncated JD, target magnitude and check star magnitude.

If you want to report "absolute" values (that is v - c + C), simply specify a value in the "Comp. Mag." box. This value is reflected in the graphs and is added to v - c and k - c before the file is written.

Smoothing is also applied when the data is saved.
 

You can come back to this web-page to check for updates by clicking the link in the lower right corner. Any comments, bug reports or suggestions of improvements are welcomed, just send an e-mail to geir.klingenberg .at. gmail.com.
 

Download the latest version of AIPImport

Note that this software requires the Microsoft .NET Framework to run. If you have Windows XP you probably already have it. You can check by looking for "Microsoft .NET Framework" in the Add or Remove Programs list (go to Start->Control Panel->Add or Remove Programs).

Download version without .NET framework (0.5 MB)

Download version with .NET Framework (23 MB)

Feel free to contact me if you have any problems during download or installation of the software.

New in Version 1.1.0

• Now supports AIP V2.0 format for a single comp star.

• Added some keyboard short-cuts.

• Added the possibility to manually enter text for the chart header.

New in Version 1.0.1

• Added the possibility to merge AIP files

• Added the possibility to delete observations from the file

• Added menus as I ran out of room for buttons

• Removed the info panel to the left and replaces it with labels that pop up when a data point is clicked

• Fixed a bug with the exponential smoothing option that caused a boundary problem with the k - c sequence

• Fixed a problem that caused the k - c and v - c charts to pop back to their initial positions if the smoothing method was changed