TFIT: A Photometry Package Using Prior Information for Mixed-Resolution Data Sets

We describe the TFIT software package to measure galaxy photometry using prior information from high-resolution observations. Our basic methodology is similar in principle but different in detail from previous procedures for crowded field photometry. We use the spatial positions and morphologies of objects in an image with higher angular resolution to construct object templates, which are then fitted to a lower resolution image, solving for the object fluxes as free parameters. Using extensive experiments on both simulated and real data, we show that this template-fitting method measures accurate object photometry to the limiting sensitivity of the image. In this limit, our method derives robust flux upper limits for objects fainter than the limiting image surface brightness. We describe the challenges encountered in applying this technique to real data, and methods to cope with some of them.