Empty psfMagErr in objectForcedSource for DP2

Hi folks!

I’m currently using the object catalog in EDP2, particularly the light curves in objectForcedSource. I’m a bit confused because some objects have ~40 epochs in their light curves, with ~30 filled psfMag values, but most of the points have an empty/NaN psfMagErr. For example, objectId: 756398235370674612 has 44 epochs in its light curve, 24 of the psfMag values are null, and 40 of the psfMagErr values are null. None of these observations are flagged, so I was wondering what this means — are these observations still reliable? Thank you!

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Hi @scharney, thanks for the question. I was unable to reproduce the issue. In the FourcedSource DP2 catalog for objectId= 756398235370674612, I see 46 measurements with no null entries for psfFlux or psfFluxErr using the Portal ADQL query:
SELECT objectId,visit,detector,band,psfFlux,psfFluxErr,psfDiffFlux,psfDiffFluxErr
FROM dp2.ForcedSource
WHERE (objectId =756398235370674612).

Can you provide either the portal ADQL query or code you used that resulted in the null entries?

NULLs are probably resulting from attempted conversion of all the negative fluxes here to magnitude?

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To add to Fritz’s diagnosis: the psfMag column is derived from psfFlux via psfMag = -2.5*log10(psfFlux) + zp, so any measurement with negative psfFlux comes out as null. The DP2 tutorial notebook 305.1 Variable star light curves is a good worked example.

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Hi @scharney ,

For the source with objectId = 756398235370674612, I get the same results as @sgreenstreet showed above. Additionally, the ForcedSource table does not contain converted magnitude columns. So I guess you did the flux to magnitude conversion by yourself. In that case, @Garreth’s response seems to answer your question, so I have marked it as the solution. However, if this doesn’t fully resolve your issue, please feel free to unmark it and provide a bit more detail so we can reproduce the problem and assist you further.

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