KOPR Live Theta-86 → Theta-110

Developer history of the APCHK redesign and the reference-star source/background correctness chain through the current Theta-110 / 0.1.0.dev625 contract.

Historical attribution caveat: Theta-97 and Theta-99→110 are directly backed by retained release/evidence artifacts. Theta-98 is identified directly as the R2E2B baseline for Theta-99. Theta-86→96 release-by-release attribution is reconstructed from retained current QA contracts and the monotonic implementation sequence; verify original standalone release reports before publishing a formal external per-release history.

Current Theta-110 contract

  • Manual aperture adequacy is a non-blocking observer advisory, not a physical coma-edge detector.
  • The contamination-resistant automatic path is authoritative for ACF measurement and uses the frozen observer ACF context plus per-radius canonical local background.
  • Review follows filtered Curve-of-Growth evidence, stops sequentially at the first evidence boundary, scans contamination already inside the observer aperture and bootstraps tiny apertures.
  • Qualified V1 calibration remains 0.10 mag / 20% projected horizon.
  • Try suggested aperture is preview-only; remeasurement requires explicit Perform Comet Measure.
  • Reference-star measurement overlays are source-local; frozen background provenance is bound to the true source image.
  • Invalid reference background is a per-star quality rejection; the canonical ensemble solver owns whole-observation sufficiency. Comet background remains strict fail-closed.

Release sequence

ReleasePackageMain change
Theta-860.1.0.dev601APCHK-A2 diagnostic background/geometry preparation; historical foundation.
Theta-870.1.0.dev602APCHK-A3 shared typed adequacy evaluator.
Theta-880.1.0.dev603Public AUTOPHOT science reuse boundary.
Theta-890.1.0.dev604Strict same-Comet-image FWHM provenance; later removed as an APCHK dependency.
Theta-900.1.0.dev605Provisional manual-comet transaction/candidate model.
Theta-910.1.0.dev606WCCD shadow integration and Check manual comet aperture setting.
Theta-920.1.0.dev607Actionable recommendation transaction; later preview semantics supersede auto-remeasure.
Theta-930.1.0.dev608Transient review overlay and display-only Auto-stretch for aperture check.
Theta-940.1.0.dev609R2A measurement-equivalent sweep; removed WCS/FWHM/Star Measure as required review inputs.
Theta-950.1.0.dev610Cautious observer wording: recommendation rather than claimed correct/physical aperture.
Theta-960.1.0.dev611R2C active WCCD measurement-equivalent integration; later superseded by ACF/CoG path.
Theta-970.1.0.dev612Independent-background cross-check changed from hard gate to advisory.
Theta-980.1.0.dev613Same-measurement comparator with canonical local background sampled separately for every radius.
Theta-990.1.0.dev614Live WCCD cutover to frozen same-measurement context; old “unstable independent background” wording removed.
Theta-1000.1.0.dev615ACF/CoG evidence model: raw versus used increments, clipping, trend/residual and Δmag.
Theta-1010.1.0.dev616Sequential ACF shadow policy and V1 candidate calibration 0.10 mag / 20%.
Theta-1020.1.0.dev617Live sequential ACF/CoG cutover; Ordinary comparator removed from authoritative adequacy path.
Theta-1030.1.0.dev618Observer-prefix contamination preflight prevents a contaminated large aperture from normalizing the baseline.
Theta-1040.1.0.dev619Observer-facing evidence-boundary interpretation and adversarial/real-data qualification.
Theta-1050.1.0.dev620Tiny-aperture CoG bootstrap.
Theta-1060.1.0.dev621Compact warning UX and Comet-measure viewport preservation.
Theta-1070.1.0.dev622Try suggested aperture becomes preview-only with no automatic remeasure/commit.
Theta-1080.1.0.dev623Reference source_id/source_role provenance and image-local measurement overlays.
Theta-1090.1.0.dev624Frozen reference-background validity/geometry/sample provenance; source-specific legacy fallback.
Theta-1100.1.0.dev625Per-star reference-background quality gate; whole-observation decision returned to canonical ensemble solver.

Qualification/audit milestones without a separate release

  • Post-Theta-97 R2E1 real-FITS audit demonstrated that the 10P independent background was stable and exposed the distant frozen-sky/raw-annulus failure mode.
  • Post-Theta-104 four-comet RQ covered 10P, C/2023 R1, 169P and C/2025 M2; no new product defect and no calibration change.
  • Post-Theta-110 combined RQ: 13/13 explicit combined workflow PASS, 89/89 broader directly affected WCCD PASS, architecture 322 files / 802 edges / 0 SCC / 0 violations, no code change and therefore no Theta-111.
  • Native GUI smoke on the qualification host remains HOLD because PyQt5 was unavailable.

Superseded behavior

Do not describe the current product as a physical coma-radius detector, plateau finder, long full-field frozen-background sweep, raw-annulus authoritative classifier, WCS/FWHM/Star-Measure-dependent APCHK, automatic remeasure after Try suggested aperture, global cross-image star-overlay restorer, or whole-WCCD abort on the first invalid reference background.

Related documentation

Current WCCD architecture · User workflow · ACF science · Qualification