MMT image reduction error

[astro-vic]

I downloaded the raw data as normal and ran the pipeline. It did finish running but was not able to successfully generate a stack. The last two messages from the log are:

[2025-09-24 13:17:53,776::solve_wcs.py::301] [ERROR] FAILURE: did not solve /data/MMT/BINOSPEC/FRB20250528A_r/2025.0924/data/red/workspace/FRB20250528A_r.r.ut250924.2.11.1443163088.fits
[2025-09-24 13:17:53,825::main_pipeline.py::137] [ERROR] Could not generate a stack for FRB20250528A_r_r_2_11

Do you know what might be going on?
Thanks!

[jenivevepearson]

I am having the same issue as Vic. It also looks like it failed to solve the WCS for all the images as well but I'm not sure this is related. I tried to run solve-field on the files in the workspace and was able to get a WCS solution provided I used --use-source-extractor in the command.

[charliekilpatrick]

Hi @jenivevepearson - thanks for pointing this out. We've had a persistent issue with MMT reductions because the TCS was updated to encode the RA in decimal hours in the header, which broke our interpreter for the pointing coordinates in the WCS module. There are two solutions to this:

Recommended: update the WCS in your files by explicitly setting the header RA/DEC keywords to their values in decimal degrees, e.g.,

import glob
from astropy.io import fits

for file in glob.glob('*proc.fits'):
    hdu = fits.open(file)
    for i,h in enumerate(hdu):
        hdu[i].header['RA']=XX.XXXX
        hdu[i].header['DEC']=XX.XXXX

    hdu.writeto(file, overwrite=True)

Less recommended, I have a hot-fix on my personal branch that I need to test further but will ultimately solve the astrometry for your file independent of the RA/DEC header keywords. You can install with:

pip install git+https://github.com/CIERA-Transients/POTPyRI.git@dev-cdk

[charliekilpatrick]

This should be partly addressed by: #54. Until we do another full release of POTPyRI, please reinstall POTPyRI using this version:

pip install --force-reinstall git+https://github.com/CIERA-Transients/POTPyRI.git

Open a new issue if this problem persists with MMT/Bino.