I think I have found the problem... It seems in V2.19.5 they added a config file option called SATUR_KEY to read a keyword  to go with the SATUR_LEVEL fixed value. It seems that SATUR_KEY (which has a default value of 'SATURATE') is read from the header of the FITS/NDF file even if SATUR_KEY doesn't exist in the config file or it does exist but is commented out. In my case this bit me because we do have SATURATE in our header and for some cameras it has bad values of 0.00 and so everything was being set to saturated.... <sigh>

(We do detect and correct for this problem within the pipeline, but obviously at the stage we are calling EXTRACTOR we haven't synced the corrected value back to the NDF and so it is still picking up the old version. The solution is presumably to either sync it back to the NDF earlier or set SATUR_KEY to 'FOOBAR' to make it use the SATUR_LEVEL value which we populate the EXTRACTOR config file with via _GET_SATURATION_LEVEL_).

(There is also a GAIN_KEY config item in the new (S)Extractor as well as further trap for the unwary)

Sigh,

TimL

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Dr Tim Lister
Astronomer and Project Scientist
Las Cumbres Observatory (LCOGT.net)
+1 805 880 1989