Hi Grady,

Just to follow up here after our conversation on zoom the other day regarding what people use to do photometric calibration and reduction. Most professionals and those that learn how to do this at an undergraduate or above level will most likely learn how to use python do to this work. Please see below for the links to the various packages, reference guides, and tutorials on how to do this

Python, Astropy is the hub of most things to do with astronomy. The homepage can be found here


https://www.astropy.org/index.html



tutorials on how to use astropy and its various functions can be found here


https://learn.astropy.org/



the guide on how to reduce images (flats, darks, bias etc) can be found here


https://www.astropy.org/ccd-reductio...0-Preface.html


Once you have calibrated images, the best way to do photometry is to use the photutils package, a package or add-on to AstroPy. This goes through how to estimate your background, how to find sources, how to do aperture photometry, how to do PSF photometry and more


https://photutils.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html



for most of the work folks do, the aperture photometry section is probably the most useful section to dig into.


https://photutils.readthedocs.io/en/.../aperture.html

Best,

David