Astroart 9 SP1

[fabdev]

Hello, a new minor version of Astroart 9 was released today.
Actually this is the biggest upgrade ever released in a service pack.
Download at: https://www.msb-astroart.com/

Version 9.0 SP1 - February 12, 2025
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* New feature. Filter for removing bright and dark spots.
* New feature. Filter for reducing seams in mosaics.
* New feature. Flat fields for color cameras in grayscale or color.
* New feature. Resize with Lanczos interpolation.
* New feature. Opening of compressed FITS images.
* New feature. Reading of ILP preprocessing files.
* New feature. Option for ADES file format for MPC reports.
* New feature. Annotations with live equatorial coordinates in the text.
* New feature. Window for controlling the FlatPanel.
* New feature. Two switches can be controlled.
* New feature. Several camera setups can be saved.
* New feature. Focusing and guiding on a sunspot.
* New feature. User defined minimum altitude for telescope GOTOs.
* New feature. Script commands for trichromy and for opening masks.
* Improved. Better antialiasing for thumbnails in the browser.
* Improved. Better hot pixels correction for RGB demosaic.
* Improved. Preview for hot pixels correction in RGB demosaic.
* Improved. Equatorial coordinates can be shown without the grid.
* Improved. Opacity for equatorial grid when saving JPEG/TIFF.
* Improved. Opening of multi-image FITS is faster.
* Improved. Recent files for masks.
* Improved. Software binning up to 8x8.
* Improved. Rotate shows the rotation angle for calibrated images.
* Improved. Moving a selection shows a crosshair for centering.
* Improved. Better algorithm for focusing on a spectrum.
* Improved. The name of the sequence can be set from the last GOTO.
* Bug fix. Demosaic with binning 2x2 did not update the WCS.
* Bug fix. Equatorial grid was saved with a wrong color in JPEG/TIFF.
* Bug fix. Deconvolution parameters were not shown in the History.
* Bug fix. Some Sharpless nebulas could not be searched.

Some screenshots:

[fabdev]

About ILP files:

ILP is a new open standard to make preprocessing files compatible between different software, see:
https://www.astrophotography.app/ILP_Standard.php

for the moment Astroart is only capable to read these files, but in the next version it will be also possible to write them.
ILP permits to quickly compare different software on a given list of images/darks/flats etc.
Also, for software which does only camera control, writing ILP files will allow a tighter integration with software for image processing.

[Rudi]

Thanks Fabio. Looking forward to test the Solar AF, both white light and h-alpha

[Dunmunro]

Wow! Great news.

[nmac]

Thanks for the update Fabio.
I have already tested the inclusion of fz (compressed fits) and this only will provide a huge space saving on hard drive, specially on OSC.
Will try the other features also.

[agd.alberto]

I would like to thank Fabio for his attention, his availability, his professionalism and his always kind collaboration.
Astroart is irreplaceable for me. Thanks Fabio!
alberto