Jocular: a tool for astronomical observing with a camera

[Martin Meredith]

Release v0.6 is now out via

pip install jocular

If you're installing for the first time, follow the instructions here

In addition to the features mentioned above, I've added the ability to choose how the luminance channel is mapped, via actual L, synthetic L, average of actual and synthetic L, or using a narrowband channel. The R, G and B channels can also be reweighted from the default 1:1:1 (in case you've measured the response of yiour RGB filters to a G2V star, for example). This G2V calibration approach may be automated in the future.

[Davesellars]

Interested in this but currently only seems to be supporting up to Python 3.9?  Any chance of support for Python v3.10 soon?

[Martin Meredith]

What errors do you get when you try to install? It may be that one of the dependencies requires 3.9 or lower (I'm running 3.8 myself).

[Davesellars]

Hi Martin,

I've installed it without any errors occuring (afaik!) and it opens OK.  I saw in the installation instruction that it only supported up to Python 3.9.  I'm not sure how to connect the camera (ZWO ASI178) - nothing seems to be enabled for connection (I've gone through the QuickStart but nothing is appearing like in your images...  Here I've just clicked on the camera button directly and it turns green but that's it...  Nothing else is enabled unless I'm missing something....

 

 

Edited October 16, 2022 by Davesellars

[Martin Meredith]

Hi Dave

Quickstart is useful for exploring the interface with previous captures but the place to look is the live observation page: https://jocular.readthedocs.io/en/latest/liveobservation.html

Basically, this will tell you to click on the telescope icon (at around 2.30 on the interface) and choose the ASI camera option. If your camera is plugged in when you click connect it ought to find it. This is a one-time-only setup.

cheers

Martin

 

 

 

[Davesellars]

Many thanks, Martin.

That's a little clearer!  I've now connected the camera and set gain and offset with an exposure of 2 seconds with the cap open on the telescope (testing during the day...)  and clicking on the camera icon which then goes green but nothing is being displayed...  I've used APT to ensure that something would be displayed and it's fine there...  What could be the issue?

[Steve in Boulder]

49 minutes ago, Davesellars said:

Many thanks, Martin.

That's a little clearer!  I've now connected the camera and set gain and offset with an exposure of 2 seconds with the cap open on the telescope (testing during the day...)  and clicking on the camera icon which then goes green but nothing is being displayed...  I've used APT to ensure that something would be displayed and it's fine there...  What could be the issue?

Do you see anything happening in the 'capture' line in the status area (lower right hand side outside the circle)?  And just to be clear: when you say you've connected the camera, you've both selected "ASI Camera" and clicked the "connect" button?  

[Davesellars]

41 minutes ago, Steve in Boulder said:

Do you see anything happening in the 'capture' line in the status area (lower right hand side outside the circle)?  And just to be clear: when you say you've connected the camera, you've both selected "ASI Camera" and clicked the "connect" button?  

Hi Steve!  Many thanks.  Yes, i've connected the camera selecting ASI Camera and then connected - the light then shows green to show connected fine.  Nothing is showing in the Capture area at all after clicking the Camera button (camera button is lit)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 16, 2022 by Davesellars
added image

[Martin Meredith]

Very odd. If you PM me the most recent log file in your joculardata logs directory I might spot something going on... (or you might see something in there yourself).

[Steve in Boulder]

Can you try turning the gain down a little?  400 is the max value, perhaps that's causing a problem.  With the 178MM, gain 200-300 is probably preferable for EEVA.  At 400 the full well value and dynamic range are very low (bad).  At gain 200, read noise is almost as good as at 400, but much better full well and dynamic range.  You can see the graphs here.

[Davesellars]

Thanks Steve.  I'll give that a go once I've got the computer back (kids have it... :p)  I believe I was using 200 before and turned it up to 400 to try...

[Davesellars]

15 minutes ago, Martin Meredith said:

Very odd. If you PM me the most recent log file in your joculardata logs directory I might spot something going on... (or you might see something in there yourself).

Many thanks Martin..  Will do later!

 

[Davesellars]

Hi Martin,

Sent PM with the full log.  This is the only failure I can see in the log (gets repeated a few times)

 16Oct22 21:22:14.001 | ERROR    | jocular.component         | get                        |   34 | cannot import module Capture (DLL load failed while importing _cascade: The specified module could not be found.)

Many thanks.

David.

[mintakax]

Are there any tips or tricks that would allow jocular to continue a stack after a GEM meridian flip ? I've been talking with Steve about it, but thought I'd throw the question here. My experience so far has been that subs fail to stack after a meridian flip and I have just been restarting jocular to begin a fresh stack.

Thanks

Dan

[catburglar]

I suspect it’s because the orientation of the view is flipped - so you’d need to change that in the view settings…but not sure if that just affects the new images or the entire stack-in which case you’ll still be snookered I suspect…

[Steve in Boulder]

1 hour ago, catburglar said:

I suspect it’s because the orientation of the view is flipped - so you’d need to change that in the view settings…but not sure if that just affects the new images or the entire stack-in which case you’ll still be snookered I suspect…

I feel like this has a shot.  The combination of a top-bottom flip and a left-right flip is a 180 degree rotation, which is I think what happens with a meridian flip.  So toggle both flip switches.  

[mintakax]

4 minutes ago, Steve in Boulder said:

I feel like this has a shot.  The combination of a top-bottom flip and a left-right flip is a 180 degree rotation, which is I think what happens with a meridian flip.  So toggle both flip switches.  

I'll try it, hopefully tonight, otherwise I have a saved set of subs I can try it with off line.

[Martin Meredith]

No, that won't work I'm afraid. Flipping is only done as a final step prior to display rather than when the subs are coming in. I could add a 'flip on input' I suppose but I'd need to think thru any ramifications elsewhere.

[mintakax]

9 hours ago, Martin Meredith said:

No, that won't work I'm afraid. Flipping is only done as a final step prior to display rather than when the subs are coming in. I could add a 'flip on input' I suppose but I'd need to think thru any ramifications elsewhere.

Thanks Martin-- Yes, I confirmed that flipping does not allow stacking to continue after a meridian flip. I vote YES for a "flip on input" or some switch to tell jocular that from now on subs will be flipped. That said I realize that my use of jocular has strayed towards the boundaries of EAA. I use it to stack and display mono channels that I am collecting for AP. Being able to continue the stack after a meridian flip would just be to make a "deeper" stack.  Being able to stack and color combine mono channels has really added a level of involvement to collecting a lot of data for one target that just wasnt there before. Its really added another dimension to the excitement!

[Martin Meredith]

Thinking more about this, I think the only way it is going to work is for the orientation to be embedded in the FITs header. The reason is that when you reload the subs at any point in the future, you would have to respecify the flipping point every time, which would be supremely tedious. Maybe the software you use for capture already does this? If you send me a FITS file (not a Jocular-created FITs) I will check the headers.

[mintakax]

Thanks Martin--That makes sense.  I will check to see if this info is in the FITS header. Off hand, I dont think it is.
Dan

[Astrosurf71]

Wondering when (if) ZWO OSC will be supported? I'd like to use this for outreach and I currently have a ZWO ASI294MC Pro

 

Thanks

Mike

[Martin Meredith]

Hi Mike

It is currently possible to use OSC via the watched directory approach by selecting a non-mono colour space, but isn't yet integrated into native capture, so you would have to use a different capture program and then feed the subs into Jocular. I really ought to modify the ZWO native capture side so that it also does this for direct capture too -- this might happen in the short term. 

The way it works is to split each incoming OSC sub into R, G and B subs, and then proceeds as if they were coming from a mono camera plus filters. This isn't really ideal, but Jocular was designed for LAB colour space rather than RGB, so it would need a reasonable amount of work to do things differently. It might happen in the future, but not in the short term.

cheers

Martin

 

[mintakax]

On 30/10/2022 at 10:09, Martin Meredith said:

Thinking more about this, I think the only way it is going to work is for the orientation to be embedded in the FITs header. The reason is that when you reload the subs at any point in the future, you would have to respecify the flipping point every time, which would be supremely tedious. Maybe the software you use for capture already does this? If you send me a FITS file (not a Jocular-created FITs) I will check the headers.

The collection software I use writes the image Center Altitude and Center Azimuth into the FITS header. But this will not help with determining the orientation since my mount will easily image an hour after a transit before a meridian flip is necessary. Whats needed is an entry that lists what side of the mount the scope is on. I found one entry in the FITS header called BTP with a description of "Beyond the pole". Dr. Google does not help me find out what this is exactly, but from the images that I have looked at, it seems to switch from 1 to 0 after a meridian flip. I'm going to investigate this more.

[mintakax]

Martin, I have confirmed with Software Bisque that this BTP FITS Header entry specifies the East or West placement of the OTA during the image capture, with a value of  0 indicating OTA East (Pointing West) and 1 indicating OTA West (pointing East). I'm not sure if this is sufficient to act as a reference to  the sub orientation.  As far as my subs are concerned, if it is a "1", then it is always the orientation of pre-meridian flip, if it is "0" the subs orientation is rotated 180 degrees.

What do you think?

 

dan