Errors and How to Fix Them

Errors and How to Fix Them#

Here is a list of errors I’ve encountered while running these programs and what I did to fix them. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but you may find it useful all the same.

  • When trying to run import astroquer.mast as Observation, I encountered an error stating that StructuredUnit could not be imported from astropy.units.

    • SOLUTION: In the command line, run conda update astropy. Then, reopen python or the .ipynb and run again the import.

  • While importing TweakReg with from drizzlepack import tweakreg, particularly on a MAC with a Silicon chip, you may encounter an importation error. This is caused by some problem during the installation process.

    • SOLUTION: In the terminal, try to force conda to reinstall scipy, libgfortran, and libgfortran5 with conda install -c conda-forge --force-reinstall scipy libgfortran libgfortran5. If this doesn’t work, you can try uninstalling and reinstalling drizzlepac with pip uninstall drizzlepac or conda remove drizzlepac, followed by conda install -c conda-forge -c astroconda drizzlepac. If that fails, consult with ChatGPT and try its solutions until something works.

  • While running TweakReg, I encountered an error that read: OSError: Empty or corrupt FITS file.

    • SOLUTION: At least one of the FITS files in your input list is bad. If you run each individual file through TweakReg, you may eventually find one (or more) that returns ValueError: Input file '<filename>' is neither a GEIS file nor a FITS file. Remove these from your item list. You can also attempt to open each FITS file in a for loop using a try and except block to find the bad files; this is a quicker method.

  • When trying to run a bash script obtained by running WriteDS9, received the error application-specific initialization failed: couldn't connect to display ":0".

    • SOLUTION: Try opening an XQuartz terminal either through the application or by typing xterm & into the terminal. The bash script should be executable through that new xterm terminal. If you receive an additional error application-specific initialization failed: couldn't connect to display ":1", run export DISPLAY=:0 and try again. One may also try to following steps in the standard command line terminal (and if all else fails, feed your errors into ChatGPT and follow the instructions given):

pkill Xquartz
open -a XQuartz
echo $DISPLAY
export DISPLAY=:0
echo 'export DISPLAY=:0' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc
xhost + localhost
xterm &

  • When running the DS9 bash script from WriteDS9, you may encounter an error telling you that command ds9 not found, or something to that effect. This happens if DS9 is not installed as expected.

    • SOLUTION: in the .sh script, replace the ds9 command with the path to your DS9 installation (e.g. /Applications/<some path>/ds9).