From: "Tim" <tjp314@pacbell.net>

Date: April 25, 2005 1:53:47 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: jupiter with moons/ 4-19-05

Milton:

Thanks for the reply.

I check the website for weather sometimes, but not always. Probably should, though.

After all, the computer's right there in front of me when I need to know!

Interesting about Astro IIDC. I am very anxious to try it out with a firewire camera. Should

be later this week, unless I lose the bid on this one. Then, I'll deal with the weather. ;o)

Already, though, the cababilities and advantages of Astro IIDC, so far as I can tell, far

outstrip any of the packages available for the PC.

My HP laptop, with a 1Ghz Celeron (or was that Celery?) processor and .5GB RAM still takes

several minutes to process a 2-min, 1200-frame avi with Registax 2. I tried Registax 3,

but it freezes before I get to the processing stage.

I think that computer has a 60GB hard drive, and I've found that it starts to lose frames if I

fill it up within about 5GB of capacity. So, I acquire a movie, process a "final" picture from

it, then delete or write over the movie with the next one to stay "efficient." I can get about

5 or 10 useable products in a session that way.

I've been finding it rather entertaining of late - the popularity of the ToUcam. When I

compare the ToUcam with the much older 3Com Homeconnect, I'm amazed at the

difference in quality of the individual frames. The ToUcam usually wins out in the end

because of the higher transfer rate, but the individual frames are always quite a bit worse

than the individual frames from the 3Com.

So, I'd been hoping for something for amateur astronomers to use with firewire webcams

(and Macs!) for a long time now. I've considered, recently, buying another 3Com (they're

readily available on ebay), since mine arrived with a crack in the case. But now, I don't

think I will. Even if the individual frame quality from the 3Com were comparable to a

firewire camera (doubtful), the best frame rate/low compression combination still only

gets me 2 or 3 frames in a second. An order of magnitude more? I can live with that!

-Tim.

--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, Milton Aupperle <milton@o...> wrote:

Hi Tim;

On 25-Apr-05, at 12:08 PM, Tim wrote:

but the seeing

was absolutely awful - and when I saw later on the news that the Jet

Stream was right over

Los Angeles, I saw why! We've got rain coming again later this week,

so it isn't likely that

the seeing will be good between now and next week. But I'll keep

trying.

I like to check

http://www.theweatherchannel.ca/weather/maps/floods.htm?sys

to see where the Jet Stream(s) and major systems are. Calgary has been

having a week of good to very good stable clear skies (last night I got

another 10 gigbytes of good jupiter movie), but that's supposed to end

in a few days.

Are you saying that Astro IIDC doesn't give you a box for registering

like Registax does,

for instance? That could be a problem, but maybe offset somewhat by

the greater ability

to select stacked frames? I particularly like the option of setting

the minimum quality for

inclusion in the video up front.

This refers to two separate aspects of stacking and aligning in Astro

IIDC for different versions.

Version 1.03.00 beta of Astro IIDC (only available to registered

customers) can stack and align in real time (ie at approximately 30 fps

on a G4 1.25 Gighz laptop) and produces a 16 bit single frame stack

tiff file. You can use the Sharpness percentage estimator to eliminate

"blurry" frames on the fly. You don't select an area to align with and

it does it automagically.

Version 2.00.00 beta of Astro IIDC (currently available to a few

select beta testers) can do the above (actually better now) and also

can do it with recorded 8 or 16 bit movies (note there is no other

stacking software on the Mac for 16 bit movies at all). It will

calculate image sharpness for all the frames, then lets you set a % cut

off based on the statistics of the sharpness, using a histograms and

mean, median, mode and STD to decide which to include/exclude, and then

auto aligns the frame using a user selected algorithm (planetary or

Lunar/Solar). It also can batch stack movies so in most cases I set a

few parameters up in a dilaog, pass it a list of up to 255 movies and

off it goes. Also every image I've posted here (including the DSO star

shots) has been aligned and stacked using Astro IIDC 2.0. Nebula and

star shots are still problematic and not 100% reliable - but eventually

I'll design a TIN or Chord star recognition system for that case.

Hope that helps..

Milton J. Aupperle

President

ASC - Aupperle Services and Contracting

Mac Software (Drivers, Components and Application) Specialist

#1005 - 815 14th Avenue. S.W.

Calgary Alberta Canada T2R0N5

1-(403)-229-9456

milton@o...