photutils residual_image has stars when saving it to fits file

Question

after doing PSF photometry with fixed stars using photutils I display the residual image and some stars are not fully removed. I tried saving the residual_image to a fits file to inspect it better but the resultant fits file has little boxes with the stars PSF in the position of the original star. Do you know how can I save the residual_image to a fits file without including the inspected stars? Here is the piece of code saving the image:

residual_image = photometry.get_residual_image()
fits.writeto('psf_residual.fits',data=residual_image,overwrite=True)

Here is a section of the resultant image: https://i.stack.imgur.com/TP3IE.png

Answer 1

Solved. After many tries, I discovered that the sigma I was using for the PSF model was too large, I was thinking it was too small [insert facepalm here].