Outputs (depending on the mode, any combination of):
- Catalog of identified trails, including some parameters (trail brightness estimates and brightness uncertainty estimates, start and end positions, width of the trail, and other parameters to be determined)
- Mask file with flag set for each affected pixel
- Images with trail affected pixels modified to minimize impact on data.
Figure 2. Schematic of TrailMask, when running in its simple configuration. In this example, since the user does not intend to use trailsubtracted images, the only outputs are the identified trail catalog and masked images.
3.1.2. Modes
TrailMask should support several modes, using different prior information and different desired outputs.
Prior information
- Run “seeded” with manual info about trail location and parameters, (optional input e)
- Run “seeded” using the output of PassPredict or similar
- Run “blind” without prior info on where the trails are
These different options ensure that one can deal with trails that were not predicted or were mispredicted.
Desired output
TrailMask should have the capability to find trails, mask every affected pixel, model the trails, and even minimize the noise signal. However, depending on use case, some or several of these options might be superfluous, or even undesirable. For instance, in many science cases where the noise properties must
