Astroart Forum

Hello, a new minor version of Astroart 8 is available:
https://www.msb-astroart.com/

Version 8.0 SP1 - March 14, 2022
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* New feature. Autocenter window with plate solving.
* New feature. Cut and Copy Borders for rotated images in Preprocessing.
* New feature. Drizzle for rotated images and option for filtering.
* New feature. Points can be selected on the full-frame blink window.
* New feature. Gain and offset can be saved in the FITS header.
* New feature. Script commands for gain and offset.
* Improved. Cut Borders in Preprocessing is faster.
* Improved. Histogram for color images is drawn with three curves.
* Improved. Sequences without autosave are notified also in the status bar.
* Improved. The camera frame in the atlas shows the field size in arcminutes.
* Improved. The image frame in the atlas can show the orientation.
* Improved. More FITS files from the Hubble space telescope are supported.
* Improved. Astrometry and photometry for images with 0.0 .. 1.0 range.
* Improved. Several keyboard shortcuts, see below.
* Bug fix. Multiscale lowpass created artifacts when negative pixels.
* Bug fix. Canceling the filter Remove Gradient did not work sometimes.
* Bug fix. Some "Help" buttons did not work.

About the new Centering Window, take a look at the post in the "Instrumentation" section: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=671

Gain and Offset for the camera require the ASCOM plugin version 2.40. The Offset requires the ASCOM platform 6.5 or newer and a modern camera driver with ASCOM Class Interface 3.0.

New keyboard shortcuts:
Press "C" on a zoomed image to center the field on the mouse cursor.
Press "Shift+C" to copy a screenshot of the image window to the clipboard.
Press "Shift+S" in the Stars Window to snap the active annotation to the selected star.
Press "D" in the Atlas to display the UP direction of an image frame, example: Press "R" to rotate the Atlas so that it's aligned with the image.
Clear skies,
Fabio.

Thanks for the improvements.

Alas I won't be back at my observatory until the Fall...

I will be testing the improved drizzle stacking ASAP.

Hi and thanks for the SP1!

Already tried the new Dizzle option. I found out that I have to disable the "Keep 16 Bit" option for it to function properly or else I get a completly white image result.
I am using DSLR Lights (Nkon D5500) in my case.

Thanks for the new features. I'm eager to try the Telescope.autocenter script. Am I correct that the ra de are read from the telescope goto? And the parameters for plate solving are as in "Options" and "Tools/Plate solve"?
That reminds me, when I switch between two scopes I need to load the correct parameters under each of these separate sections. Is there a simpler way that a single saved file can load all parameters instead of needing two files, steps and locations?
Thanks again,
Newell

Hi, the field of view and pixel scale in the "Options / Observer" is not used for plate solve, it's used only for the "Follow minor plate" alignment and the "CCD frame" in the Star Atlas.
So, to change the settings for plate solve, just load the settings there and remember to click the button "Save parameters".

The script command Telescope.Autocenter() reads by default the approximate coordinates from the telescope, which are usually the same of the last GOTO. It's also possible to indicate a given RA and DEC by the way. The syntax is:

Telescope.AutoCenter(exposure, binning, [ra,dec]) (where [] means optional parameters). See the Help for more information.
for example:
Telescope.AutoCenter(5.0, 2) or Telescope.AutoCenter(5.0, 2, 21.4, 82.8)

The demo version of Astroart 8 SP1 is available as well.