What kind of astronomy/ astrophotgraphy tool do you want?

[Karl Perera]

I am playing about with ideas how to be more useful to others learning to do astrophotography and wondering what kind of tool I could produce.

I have thought about a sub exposure/ total exposure calculator but wonder what other tools would be useful. Any ideas? 

I would also be interested in collaborating to produce something that might be truly useful.

Any ideas?

[vlaiv]

3 minutes ago, Karl Perera said:

I have thought about a sub exposure/ total exposure calculator but wonder what other tools would be useful. Any ideas? 

Such tool is very tricky to make.

First thing - you need to have quite a bit of knowledge in order to make one and second thing - as soon as you start making one - you find yourself in a very strange position.

In order to make tool useful to many people - you need to approximate things which makes tool very imprecise. If you on the other hand try to make tool actually worth something (precise enough to be useful) - then maybe less than 1 in a hundred will be able to use it.

 

[Karl Perera]

Very true, so I shouldn't bother?

[vlaiv]

21 minutes ago, Karl Perera said:

Very true, so I shouldn't bother?

Well, no.

If you want to do one as a way of learning all the bits, then by all means. If you want to build one to attract traffic to you website - again, certainly.

In that case it is even easier as you can copy functionality of existing ones and improve on user experience so it is easier to use.

If you want to make such tool so it will be useful to many instead of few - then I would say that maybe you should not bother as there is no simple way to do it.

In fact - there is no way to do it and not because of you or people, but because there is too much unknowns for the thing to be useful in broad sense.

Here is an example so you can judge for yourself if the tool is really useful or not and under which circumstances. What would we set as a threshold? Maybe 20-30% of accuracy? You want to know if one night's imaging will be enough for certain target and that is say 6h. If you need more that - say 8-9h than you'll need to split it to two nights.

Here comes the question - what will be your AOD on the night of imaging? Aerosol optical depth can vary between 0.1 and 0.5 on average. 0.1 being very transparent and 0.5 being very opaque.

Look at this chart:

This is current situation and over Europe we have all the cases from below 0.1 to 0.5 and even higher.

Now, if on a night of imaging you have say 0.5 AOD - that is 0.5 * 1.086 = 0.543 magnitudes fainter target.

We know how to calculate magnitudes so

0.543 = 2.5*log(ratio) => ratio  = 10^(0.542/2.5) = ~1.65

So you need 65% more imaging time to gather the same amount of photons.

Your tool's accuracy depends on condition that you don't know prior to imaging and it can lead to 50% difference under regular conditions, and how many people you know that check AOD forecast before their imaging session?

I haven't even touched upon light pollution and how it changes over the course of the evening and how it is also affected by local transparency conditions, and how hard it is to get brightness data for your targets to be able to do SNR calculations.

Sure, you can make useful tool and use it in your project - like estimation tool of order of magnitude of imaging time needed (or as comparison between different setups), @dan_adi has done so for exceptional amateur image of gravitational lensing effect, but there are so much variables that you must understand and know to be able to do such calculations with any sort of precision.

[vlaiv]

I remembered one tool that is desperately needed.

Make a tool that will do proper color calibration on LRGB/RGB data.

[Karl Perera]

Mmm interesting. I agree that the main problem is that to make an easy to use tool for said exposure calculations so many factors would have to be assumed as no one will be aware or take the time to figure out what all these values for their location at the time are. It strikes me that testing different times of subexposure etc. is quicker and more productive. After all theory is one thing whereas actual practical results are more important.

I'll think about the colour calibration and how difficult that might be.

[david_taurus83]

Sharpcap already has an optimum exposure calculator, if that's the sort of tool your talking about.

[vlaiv]

2 hours ago, Karl Perera said:

It strikes me that testing different times of subexposure etc. is quicker and more productive. After all theory is one thing whereas actual practical results are more important.

You only really need one sub from any previous session to determine sub exposure length, but it is subject to similar constraints as total exposure calculator.

LP levels fluctuate from night to night and even during the course of single session. Also, to be able to calculate sub length - one needs properly calibrated sub and correct e/ADU value to be able to measure background signal levels in electrons rather than ADUs.

In that sense, such tool still depends on user having additional knowledge.

Sharpcap, as @david_taurus83 mentions has option to determine optimum exposure length - and it works good as it does not require additional input from the user. Software does all needed measurements and calculations directly from camera and sky conditions.

[alacant]

On 01/01/2023 at 09:13, Karl Perera said:

theory is one thing whereas actual practical results are more important.

... and more helpful to the beginner.

The biggest concept I've had to come to terms with in ap is that for me at least, pragmatism is the only way forward.

Example. When I first started, I wanted to know how to stop the focuser slipping on my ed80 and how to prevent stars looking like big blue blobs. I didn't want endless commentaries about pinions/crayford/chromatic this/ lateral that... Most disconcerting also was that the very guys who had recommended certain hardware (in the days when the only recommendation was an ed80 and a heq5) had never been anywhere near the stuff they were recommending, let alone have any notion of how to fix it. The software side was even worse.

If you really are serious about getting online with ap material, perhaps hands on with what beginners use and ask is probably the only niche left in the already overcrowded ap influencer market. There are many examples on this very forum where seeing it done would be vastly superior to reading about it, but still nowhere near the level of understanding you could gain from simply going along to your local astro club and fixing your 80ed with someone who knows what they're doing.

Cheers and good luck.

 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2023 by alacant
ortografía

[ollypenrice]

There are so many variables in this game that I agree with Alacant: a pragmatic approach works because you are working with all your own variables built into the data. Trying to anticipate or quantify all those variables from theory is, in my view, effectively impossible.

Olly

[Karl Perera]

Food for thought!

[AstroMuni]

One tool that would greatly help a beginner is helping choose a telescope. If you see the forum, its filled with queries on what sort of scope should I buy. The basic questions asked by experienced folk are the same everytime - eg. visual or AP, interested in planets or DSO etc. While a tool may not be able to give an exact scope, it could be used to narrow the choices into broad set of scopes like Dobs, Mak, Frac giving a range of apertures. If a budget can be built into the tool then brilliant.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

For me in my AP journey I just feel so lucky I found this forum before spending any money on equipment.
I bought my first scope when I was in my late 50's and I always intended to image from the start so came into imaging knowing nothing about astronomy at all.
Normally I am not great with money or very patient and normally want to just buy the gear and get on with it.
But after joining SGL and being brought down to earth a little, as like most absolute beginners I wanted a scope that would do everything, planets, large DSO;s, small DSO's, galaxies, really the lot and some of the adverts for scopes you could find offered ones that may do this and for not much money, but I was soon made aware this really was not possible (at all). 
I also learned that the mount was not just a fancy tripod but did so much more and that if I was to dabble in AP then this became so much more important, maybe more so than the scope.

And after joining SGL I pretty much stopped searching the multitude of internet videos and blogs as I started to realise you could not seem to get a definitive answer how to start in AP as they all offered differing suggestions on equipment, certainly regarding the scope. There was a sort of general consensus on some  that suggested to start with a HEQ5 and probably some sort of DSLR to keep the cost down, which is the route I took but whether tis is the best route or not I am not sure and is debatable.

But I had so many questions, why do I need filters, and what filters do I need, RGB yes that makes sense, but Lum, Ha, SII, OIII what the heck were they all about ? Do I need all these ?  And what about all the other filters available, do I need any of them ? Why do most sites suggest a mono camera is best ? Too many question to mention here.
I had no idea, at all.
And, whilst SGL is great and people willingly offer advice without ever accusing somebody of stupidity at the time  I often felt that I should not be asking such basic questions as I might be ridiculed, silly I know now, but not all forums (non astro) are as understanding as this one, I know all too well.
The one thing that did put me on the straight and narrow was Steve Richards book "Every Photon Counts". A book I am sure many imagers have read and after reading a couple of times I understood at least the basics, the book is excellent, it explains the basics in language I understood having no prior knowledge of this stuff and lots of illustrations. 
Okay this did not make me an imager by any means I still had lots to learn, but it gave me the ability to learn because I now understood the very basics and had some of the vocabulary used by imagers to understand some more advanced stuff now.

So when it comes to giving advice I think you need to ask who is this advice aimed at, the complete novice, that is those just starting out with no knowledge at all and no equipment yet, or those that have started, have a setup already, but are struggling, maybe with exposure lengths, guiding (always tricky when guiding for the first time), or those that have been imaging for a year or so and managing to get data but cannot process that data, and so on because they all require different depths of explanations so as not to outface a complete beginner with terms they cannot yet understand or to drive more experienced images to boredom. 
I would think you cannot cater for all of these really and for sure whatever advice you give has to be correct so you need to understand fully what you are explaining (I know this goes without saying but I am not sure it is true for all info on the world wide web 🙂 ) .

In a long winded way I think I am just agreeing with @alacant and @ollypenrice that yes there is a place for some good basic advice to beginners trying to explain stuff like every photon counts does and trying to get them a setup capable of AP without blatantly pushing them to one particular scope, mount camera etc and helping them to process that data to produce images, again not pushing them into one particular software. And if you could the tool @AstroMuni suggests could be part of that.
After this then it very much depends on what equipment they bought, what processing software they chose, and what problems they encounter along the way as some master some things easily and struggle with other things but not all struggle with the same issues so then  it requires a pragmatic approach and finding what works for them which is very difficult to predict up front without knowing what issues they will encounter, hence why these kinds of forums with a vast amount of knowledge, form all different areas within it that can offer help to people who have a particular problem and help in real time.

Steve

 

 

[spacedobsonian]

4 hours ago, AstroMuni said:

One tool that would greatly help a beginner is helping choose a telescope. If you see the forum, its filled with queries on what sort of scope should I buy. The basic questions asked by experienced folk are the same everytime - eg. visual or AP, interested in planets or DSO etc. While a tool may not be able to give an exact scope, it could be used to narrow the choices into broad set of scopes like Dobs, Mak, Frac giving a range of apertures. If a budget can be built into the tool then brilliant.

Very true! 

[spacedobsonian]

Now, Astrophotography in Mobile has advanced a lot, you can take the same 200 photos automatically, all of semi long exposures (depends on the smartphone, mine has 40 seconds of exposures), but you can't stack them! In my opinion, a basic software like Snapseed but better, for astrophotography, and for beginners with easy UI and some stacking capability!

That would be astrophotography heaven! (Atleast for beginners!!)

[rnobleeddy]

autostakkert hasn't had an update for 4.5 years and registax for over 10 years, yet both are commonly used for planetary, solar and lunar imaging. 

I don't imagine there's a great deal of improvement to be made algorithmically, but both could be much easier to use.

[dan_adi]

On 31/12/2022 at 11:23, Karl Perera said:

I am playing about with ideas how to be more useful to others learning to do astrophotography and wondering what kind of tool I could produce.

I have thought about a sub exposure/ total exposure calculator but wonder what other tools would be useful. Any ideas? 

I would also be interested in collaborating to produce something that might be truly useful.

Any ideas?

I'm a little late to the discussion. I made my own software for my astro needs. I encourage you to build any astro app you desire. It is a wonderful learning experience, even if something similar exists. If you are a professional programmer it will be easier for you. In my case,  I only took programming classes in high school, so I had to learn python from scratch. With astropy you can build lots of cool stuff!

I made an exposure time app, a cosmology app, and a simple Simbad query to generate 3D star maps and orbits. Lots of fun!