fitting a blob

[teuben]

we need a program that fits a model to a 2D blob in a (ccd) image. Let call it ccdfit. There are programs like tablsqfit that have a user interface that should - where appropriate - be used.

Simplest first approach would be to determine the noise level (if not given), and clip over a level. Then take the mean and dispersion of those points. Maybe with an option to use only the points "connected" to each other to prevent outliers to be used and skew the results.

More advanced would be to fit a gaussian model (think of a beam) and determine the beam parameters (major, minor and position angle). There are programs in miriad (fortran) that do this too.