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Linux astronomy software


ronnietucker

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I use aladin to identify objects. It can be baffling and looks unbeautiful - as written by a set of engineering bods - but what you can do with it is exceptional.

Once you get the hang of filters and then layering the different survey maps with transparency the beauty goes up however the real great part is being able to identify all the odd moving things that people find along with all the faint fuzzies.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I've installed DSS with Wine in Linux Mint 9 and have started it working on the RAW images I collected last night. I collected a couple of hundred images of M42 at various exposures - rather a small image as I was using a 135mm telephoto lens on my 1100D.

I've selected just 39 images all at the same exposure for stacking and in the Registering window DSS said the time left was over 8 hours!! I don't know if this is the total processing time or just the time taken to register the images. Anyway, this seems a very long time for a dual core AMD 2.8MHz processor with 4GB RAM. Or is it?

I'm thinking that I should be able to do better. Has anyone any recommendations for a native Linux app that will achieve what DSS does? Do I need a faster computer?

Alternatively, I have a MacBook Pro so Mac software would be another possibility.

Or would I be better off trying to get a second hand Windows machine of higher spec than my current P4 HT based machines. I don't have Windows on my main desktop which is a home built machine.

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if you crop the same area from each image Gina, then one of the ImageMagick tools may well do it for you. Try "man mogrify" and wait for your brain to dribble out of your ears :)

(Work on copies of the images, too -- mogrify usually modifies images in-place, afair.)

James

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Has anyone used THELI?

"The THELI GUI a is very powerful package for the science-grade reduction of astronomical imaging data under Linux."

http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~theli/gui/index.html

Also, here's a thread describing someone's attempts at using Hugin and other Linux tools for image stacking:

http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/5101867/

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Nice like to know about any linux astronomy software i know they is cheese software thats great for quick imaging

and ucview also astrocapture works in linux wud like to know more about capturing software the ones that can take multiple images timelapsing :D

then again allways install wine and run windows stuff.

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The real problem with windows applications under wine from my point of view is that for "unattended" captures I'd really prefer to use a low-power computer such as a SheevaPlug, NSLU2 or, if they become more easily available, a Raspberry Pi. They're small, unobtrusive and could probably even be run from a solar panel. In the case of the first two they don't have any form of video card. In fact, the NSLU2 is only accessible over a network connection. And they're ARM-based rather than i386. That pretty much writes off windows from the start. Which is why I'm puitting effort into sorting out some command line tools that will run on Linux natively.

James

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I run scientific Linux 6.2 as my server, its what a lot of the professional community runs, as its put together from redhat enterprise and tailored for the scientific community, there is a ton of open source software out there its just a matter of finding it, Fremelab and Cern have download areas

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I faced the same issues when I wanted to perform astrophotography with my QSI CCD, Robofocus, and Lodestar autoguider. I couldn't find anything appropiate in Linux to control all these devices from one application conveniently, and decided to develop Ekos. It is a tool within KStars that supports autoguiding, autofocus, and capture with filter wheel support. You can queue capture in different sets for light, dark, bias, and flat frames as well. It is still under development, but I use it for my astrophtogprahy use all the time. It also integrates nicely with KStars with and INDI, and very straight forward to use. Ekos was released with KDE 4.10, so if you don't want want to bother compiling, get it from one the newer distros. For image processing, I use Pixinsight and with that I am totally Windows free now :-) I wrote a bit on Ekos and Pixinsight in my blog here. Any feedback of Ekos is appreciated!

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The INDI/KSTARS/EKOS  package will control lots and lots of things. It seems to be determined to be bleeding edge all of the time though which I find a bit disappointing. I often compile from source and have had some for me unusual problems with INDI as well, compiler errors and things not working out even when all of the dependencies are about. Could be it's a bit distro incestuous. Some one is working on RPM versions though.

Main reason for posting - just found this

http://www.distroastro.org/?id=select

They seem to have grouped the lot together to stop it disappearing up it's own back side. I've not loaded it yet and people may get a "may damage your computer" warning when the page is loaded. I have seen more of those lately - not windoze etc I suspect and has SOFTWARE on it.

Another interesting couple on ARM linux. I want to get these running on QEMU 1st.

http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/385710-piastrohub-raspberrypi-for-autoguidingdslrgoto/page-24#entry6490467

http://maxchen.im/tinyastro/en/

The strange devices mentioned are TV dongles. The correct ones are available as far as the processor goes from Ebay for about £35. Can't make my mind up. Their wifi range is about 5m and I need more and a USB hub is needed.  Then there is the Odroid. The 'pi 2 is slower but it may be easier to fit a more powerful wifi to it and still 3 USB sockets available. These 2 can be controlled by a tablet remotely. There are various ways of extending things on the end mentioned on the INDI site if INDI is involved that will also run on a tablet. They are looking at making INDI into a sort of thin client too but I suspect they are hung up on involving a PC somewhere.

Actually there is a lot of Linux software that is being ported to ARM.

:grin: I've stuck with KDE right from a very early version. Only problem with 4 was the disk indexing. I had been wondering why my disks kept tinkling so turned it off. Kmail ? Not a problem as OpenSuse built KDEPIM3 into 4 and it's still available on the latest version. Kfind too and the K xml editor. These days I only know that the indexing is there because of the pregnant pause when I load up a file from disk.

John

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FWIW, I`ve been tinkeriing on and off with Linux for years and a bit more recently since I heard about Ekos following a BAA meeting  last year.

I`ve had many Windows 7 usb problems in the obs  (never had a problem with XP but my old lappy died) and after speaking to a fellow amateur who put me onto Ekos and since I`ve burnt the midnight oil on many occasions. I must have tried nearly every distro going, had Kstars/Ekos working for a while then stuff went strange so had to switch to a distro which used Kstars-bleeding to get the latest upgrades. Great things have been promised for Ubuntu/Kubuntu 15.04 with a more stable KDE but I`ve had problems with that too although it is in beta, maybe better in May when the stable relase is due?.

I`m currently using Netrunner 15 which seems very promising at the moment (although I have been here before many times!)

My setup requires three ccd`s running at once and with the Ekos control panel and also the Kstars maps all fighting for screen space it does get very frustrating at times.

It can be very rewarding and frustrating in equal measures working with Linux and I felt I was doing more configuring pc`s than astronomy at one point but the open source guys are tremendously helpful. I`m playing with a Rasp Pi 2 to operate one of the ccd`s to take the strain off the main laptop at the moment. Distroastro is version 3 now but based on 14.04 so can`t have Kstars-bleeding!

regards

Steve

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You've hit on the  reason I used the word disappointing Steve  :grin: and  some others. INDI is a bit juvenile compared with main stream OSS. This is unusual actually. The problem with bleeding edge all of the time is that there is a fair chance that problems will continue to occur and some will remain undiscovered before the next one comes out. The odd thing about INDI as well is that they don't seem to keep earlier versions about. I have found older source on some distro archives but it doesn't seem to be in the same form as the ones they supply. I'll probably look at that more later. To be honest INDI is the first piece of software I have tried to install from source and not been able to do it even though the dependencies are all there. Usually the only problems I have is not being able to install updated libraries without upgrading the desktop - KDE in my case. Sometimes that isn't a problem as the new libraries can co exist.

It's a bit sad really. All distro's maintain stable releases for some time. These usually need upgrading not long after the next stable one comes out. The fact that they do this makes it easier for applications people to put out stable releases as well.  :laugh: An ex windows users needs to realise that these are near beta releases but bugs generally aren't too much of a problem.  This is nothing like running beta windows releases as I have in the past or beta windows software releases. I haven't used windows at all for a very very long time now. I can't say that that has caused me many problems and bugs I have reported have been fixed. I understand KDE5 has emerged. It's a totally different approach. I'm not keen on anything that must use that until it's clear it is where it's going and is getting near bug free. Could be that INDI might need it. 

I put in a feature request on INDI. A web interface for the lot with the set up split onto several ip addresses - the reason for the separate IP addresses is the screen size aspect you mention also if  a tab in a browser doesn't have focus there is sometimes no need for it to update which will help keep the bandwidth problems down as well. I'm after a more or less portable set up though and no PC. It seems like they are looking at a thin client approach but it doesn't appear to offer this sort of thing,

KDE 4 varies according to the distro it is on. It's been pretty good from day one on OpenSuse.  :grin: They sampled some of it when most were using KDE3 still but it was hopelessly buggy and easily removed.  Unfortunately when I have managed to build an INDI of some sort Kstars falls over when I add it, even the original KDE version but it's ok installed on it's own. I still have a few things to try and some one is working on rpm's for it but only bleeding. For me if that means chucking KDE4 for KDE5 it's a none starter at the moment as I use my PC for all sorts of things.

It will be interesting to see what's in the astro distro. Some one who is taking the trouble to do that probably wont be too keen on getting into changes every 5mins. I'm going to install it on an Atom netbook with 1gb or ram after doing a little more with what is already on it. People do not have to take the latest upgrades - if it isn't broke don't fix it, just keep what you have around some how so that you can re install if needed. Source is ideal for that or the various package formats.

I'm also going to install Debian and it's INDI package at some point.  From what I have seen that may not work out either. That would really be weird if that is the case.

John

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