AstroArt v6 released

[Droogie 2001]

I have been trailing AstroArt v5 over the last few days and have since noticed that AstroArt v6 demo without Plate Solving has been released on Friday (23^rd). Apparently the plate solving demo will be released next month.
That said what has impressed me with AstroArt 5 is its Plate Solving abilities.

Having had mixed success with Sequence Generator Pro’s Plate Solving this is a breath of fresh air.
No more fiddly around with Astronomy.net libraries, trying to get Elbrus to work. Working out angle etc. Just type in the name and make sure for FOV details are correct and it takes usually less than a second to work. Images that sometimes resolved and sometimes did not in SGP are always resolved in AA5. I have even been checking the RA & DEC against Sky Safari app to make sure it is correct. It is so amazingly fast it made suspicious whether it was actually working correctly!

Now I have only been testing with old images and have yet to test it in the field so I may be due a reality check…

The interface on AstroArt is a bit clunky but as with all software I guess it’s just a case of getting familiar with it.

I know other people have been using AA for years and highly rate it.

What with Stacking and guiding as well as dozens of other features it looks like a purchase maybe coming up.
I would be interested to know if anyone who has already got AA5 whether the have received a v6 upgrade (free?). Also what the changes are like?

[Freddie]

Upgraded and had a bit of a play. The most interesting feature so far is a new noise reduction filter. It also properly stacks frames that are exactly 180 deg rotated that I raised with them. Couple of minor bugs that I have reported to Fabio but nothing major. A free upgrade is obviously no bad thing but I think it depends how you use it that will determine if it is worth paying to upgrade. 

There is a new service pack for V5 that resolves the 180 rotation issue plus a couple of other things for those that can't upgrade.

Great bit of software and have always found them very supportive with questions etc.

[Droogie 2001]

Thanks for the review.

I tested AA5 Demo last night by adding my guide camera and DSLR to the application.
After a bit of fiddling I managed to get the two devices talking to AA.

Also had a play with the Pre-Processing tool to see if I could stack an image. As I cannot save images with the demo it was difficult to tell if it better than DSS. It does look impressive and not just an add-on to bulk up the feature count.

As mentioned previously the primary appeal for the moment is the Plate Solving.
My reason for this is that I wish to upgrade to a mono CCD in the future and therefore it is likely I will need a few nights to achieve all of the filtered frames I require, so being able to go back to an exact RA / DEC position is vital for the following nights imaging.

How easy it is to use AA to achieve this? I started writing out some high level steps but after looking at the Help file it appears to be somewhat more complicated.

There are example scripts Auto Center etc. Do you have to use this or can you manually set this via the ‘Telescope Control’, Center, GOTO (Plate Solve). This is where SGP appears to more user friendly.
Are there any online video, tutorials about getting plate solving / Auto Center working?

Finally does the full version come with a more in depth user manual rather than the built in Help section? From previous posts about AA I am sure I have read that there is an extensive user manual?

[Freddie]

Don't know about plate solving as I just use the GOTO on my mount which always gets me on the chip and then the align points you can use in Atik artemis capture to get things aligned properly.

There is a 156 page manual, though the content is based on the help pages plus some tutorials and other info.

[ChrisLX200]

Upgraded and had a bit of a play. The most interesting feature so far is a new noise reduction filter. It also properly stacks frames that are exactly 180 deg rotated that I raised with them. Couple of minor bugs that I have reported to Fabio but nothing major. A free upgrade is obviously no bad thing but I think it depends how you use it that will determine if it is worth paying to upgrade. 

There is a new service pack for V5 that resolves the 180 rotation issue plus a couple of other things for those that can't upgrade.

Great bit of software and have always found them very supportive with questions etc.

It does? V6 certainly didn't for me when I tried it yesterday! Is there some setting someplace you have to enable?

ChrisH

[Freddie]

In preprocessing when you select the options tab and then auto alignment, it brings up the align box where you would select "star pattern (trans and rot)" under method. The default doesn't include rotation so I assume everyone would always select this.

On the right side of the align box is options. The default is "automatic settings" and rotation 45 deg. Un-tick "automatic settings" and change rotation to 180. It will then be able to stack pre and post flip images. You have always been able to do this even in AA5 but there was an issue if two files were rotated by exactly 180 which Fabio sorted after I contacted him. The AA5 service pack 5 resolves this issue.

One thing to note is that even with 180 entered into the rotation box if you have "automatic settings" selected it will use the standard 45 degree limit. So if ever you have pre and post flip images to stack, just un-tick that auto box. Fabio says it is best to use the default though if you don't have pre and post flip images to stack.

Hope that helps.

[Hamza]

Hello everyone, long time lurker first time poster here

I have been using AA5 for a while now and i discovered its power by seeing how fast it resolved my images. After the initial frustration with processed images that didn't wanna plate solve (stars where too bloated to find a proper centeroid), it was a breeze after that.

With this new version, i think it is extremely power hungry and it makes my computer sluggish a little bit (MacBook pro 2013, 256GB sold state, 10GB or RAM). I will be conversating about this Fabio (extremely receptive and responsive).

On a different note, if you are not familiar with Observation Manager, it is a magnificent tool to automate AA5 and now i tried with AA6. It can perform completely automated session of AP ( Astrometry, Phoetometry,...etc). I very highly recommend this piece of software.