From: "Milton Aupperle" <milton@outcastsoft.com>
Date: May 24, 2007 12:46:52 PM MDT
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Astro IIDC 3.02.01 Pre-Release
Hi Folks;
I have just released a new nearly "Golden Master" bug fix for Astro
IIDC, which brings it up to version 3.02.01:
http://www.outcastsoft.com/AstroIIDC_30201.zip.
This is just the application, no installers and I hope to do the
official full installer release and update the web site next week.
It fixes three bugs that I found this week:
- Fixed an issue with noise reduction algorithm while stacking 8 bit
movies which would arbitrarily alter the image.
- Fixed an issue with the Sharpness estimation for stacking 8 and 16
bit movies. There was timing issue where the thread for extracting
frames could get out of synch with the sharpness processing thread,
which would result in not all frames in a movie being analyzed.
- Fixed an issue where the resulting tiff file from an 8 bit
monochrome stacked movie was always being saved as a 16 bit RGB48
tiff. It is now saved as a Mono 16 bit tiff.
Additionally, I'm hoping that Point Grey Research will be able to
provide some information so that I can add support for their new 14
bit large format EXHAD 1394B Grasshopper cameras in this release too.
They had not finalized some crucial details so it could not be
supported in the last release and I'm hoping it's final now so I can
add it in.
On a side note, the reason I found these three bugs was because I
bought a UV Pass filter ( Schuler-AstroDon UV Photometric Filter from
Adirondack Video Astronomy) to try imaging the clouds of venus using a
TIS DMK-21AF04.AS Mono 8 bit camera. The filter may as well be a
opaque ND filter, as it's basically opaque when trying to see anything
visually. However with the C8 at prime focus (i.e. 200 mm aperture /
2000 mm focal length), I was able to shoot Venus at 30 fps with
moderate gains under bright twilight conditions. Unfortunately
turbulence was horrific (+/- 20 arc seconds of motion between frames)
so I have almost nothing to show for it, except that it works for
imaging venus and at good frame rates.There are some faint markings
barely visible, but I can't say for sure if they are cloud features or
just from the rapidly wavering half disk. I also want to try imaging
the moon too, especially around Aristarchus which is supposed to be a
UV reflective source.
Talk to you all later..
PS: It dumped 10 to 20 cm of wet snow on us last night and right now
it's -6 degrees Centigrade with wind chill. So much for "Global Warming"..
Milton Aupperle