What's in store for Starlight Live 3.1?

[Ain Soph Aur]

Hi Paul! Following upon the huge success of SLL v3.0, what goodies are on your bucket list for v3.1?

My #1 request: time/date stamp and exposure length added to the FITS header.

 

Edited May 10, 2016 by Ain Soph Aur
Personal bucket list

[Paul81]

The confirmed features so far:

- Added 3x3 binning for progressive cameras only. 3x3 binning is not available for interlaced cameras.
- Added display for camera firmware version to the camera properties display.
- Modified Lanczos resampling algorithm to dampen sampling artifacts around bright objects (black halo around stars).
- Fixed Bug: Camera stability issues under OSX - updates to the libUSB library have improved stability for OSX 10.11 'El Capitan'. The application will now not crash if the camera unexpectedly disconnects.

Before I release it I want to fix the red / blue issue around the edges of the stacked image.

With regards to the date/time in the FITS header - that is already in there... but I just checked it and there appears to be a bug which prevents the keyword being written to the header during save. So that'll be fixed for 3.1 too...

Paul

 

 

[Paul81]

.. And FITS date fixed... One line code change :-)

So its stored in the DATE keyword, time and date in UTC, format as follows YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS

 

[arkosg]

Hi Paul,

Astroimager software has an intriguing looking Bahtinov mask helper panel - appears to fit lines to the spikes to allow better determination of when the spikes are aligned.  It assumes/requires each spike to reach the edge of a bounding box (I'm assuming to calculate the corresponding lines).  I've never used it but it looks potential useful.... Any chance of adding something like that to SLL?

Cheers,

Greg A

 

[Paul81]

Hi Greg,

Sounds quite a reasonable feature (I must get a bahtinov mask myself at some point) - I have added it to the request list!

What would help is if you can capture some raw FITS with the mask in place both in and out of focus - that way I would have some data to work with. No rush though - I still want to fix some bugs and get the video export feature up and running first!

Paul

[MrOD]

I understand that this might be a bit  much work but at least i will plant a seed maybe. How about autofocus   Feature?

[Ain Soph Aur]

I'm not happy with TheSkyX autofocus and thats  many hundreds of dollars of software total with the camera add-on. Isn't the Bahtinov Mask Helper software open source? Paul may be able to just import that functionality into SLL.

Myself, I would MUCH rather Paul focus on the basics of what SLL does best, and leave the other stuff to other resources. 

[RobertI]

Bahtinov Mask Helper software sounds interesting, i shall investigate it. I certainly agree with concentrating on making the core functionailty of SLL as good as it can be. I already have a host of seperate s/w I use as part of a session to help me with 'peripheral' activities so its not an issue. I guess Paul, as the 'visionary', will ultimatley decide!  

Edited May 13, 2016 by RobertI

[aparker]

I'd second the motion that autofocus is likely complicated and time-consuming, and probably not a need for the bulk of SLL users.  Even though I now have a motorized focuser, I don't find it burdensome to manually focus it.  The post above did get me to order a Bahatinov mask however... :-)

 

FWIW, I would still love to see an option to monitor a folder for incoming FITS files and stack those, as an alternative to controlling an SX camera from the software.  This feature would make SLL effectively camera-agnostic and, I think, cement it as the unquestioned premiere EAA app.  I think you would start to see people saving files from their ATIK Infinities and live stacking them with SLL!  Not to mention the growing crop of fast CMOS cameras like ZWO that don't have a good EAA solution right now (especially for Mac users).

[Martin Meredith]

Alex, a Bahtinov mask is one of the best purchases you can make in my opinion. It reduces focusing from a painstaking exercise to a very rapid and simple task. I've never felt the need for an additional helper, so I don't know what extra it delivers, but by judicious choice of star and, more importantly, exposure time, you can get very sharp spikes without the helper. Maybe on nights of poor seeing having the additional tool would help.

Martin

[PeterW]

On 15 May 2016 at 23:38, aparker said:

I'd second the motion that autofocus is likely complicated and time-consuming, and probably not a need for the bulk of SLL users.  Even though I now have a motorized focuser, I don't find it burdensome to manually focus it.  The post above did get me to order a Bahatinov mask however... :-)

 

FWIW, I would still love to see an option to monitor a folder for incoming FITS files and stack those, as an alternative to controlling an SX camera from the software.  This feature would make SLL effectively camera-agnostic and, I think, cement it as the unquestioned premiere EAA app.  I think you would start to see people saving files from their ATIK Infinities and live stacking them with SLL!  Not to mention the growing crop of fast CMOS cameras like ZWO that don't have a good EAA solution right now (especially for Mac users).

... Or someone with an old Meade DSI3 colour cam either.... Good suggestion!

 

cheers

 

peter