How to stack comet images in APP?

Hi Gleeman,

Comet stacking is on the RFC list to be implemented soon.

I have been thinking about how to implement this. I aim to create a fully automatic solution, so with automatic detection of the comet. (simply said, difficult to accomplish..).

Let me know what you think comet stacking should be able to do, or if you have certain wishes for the feature. I'll try to accomodate 😉

Mabula

Hi Mabula, 

That feature would be excellent. Would be totally fine with selecting the comet manually (maybe like it is implemented) DSS.

Best Frank

Thank you Frank,

I'll try to make a robust comet detection algorithm, if it proves to be too difficult, I'll definitely will implement the manual selection.

Kind regards, 

Mabula

Hi, has comet registration been implemented yet? Manual or Automatic?

Regards

/Ulf

Dear Ulf @ulfg,

Please accept my apologies for my late reply.

No not yet, it will come though. It's rather high now on my development priority list.

Mabula

A couple comets that I have latched on to out there right now have made me wonder about this feature 🙂  Sign me up as interested.  Manual selection of the comet would be just fine if it makes it easier for round 1.  Happy New Year Mabula and all astro nuts!

Jim

It's on the list, you're definitely not the only one. 🙂 

okay THIS HERE YET?  Shot lots of comet subs last night. 

Was asked in here 2017 now it's 2020.

Yes it was asked back then, but Mabula has been hard at work to improve the calibration engine, as you can read in the release notes, and other very important stuff that needs to be right and is of use for all sorts of material. This takes a lot of time unfortunately and he's still developing alone, maybe that might change in the future. However, he is focusing on more features now as the basic engine is getting "finalised" (it'll never be ofcourse, but good enough) and some of the most requested features will be on the top together with gpu acceleration this year.

I would be extremely happy to have a function for (slow moving) comets, either fully automatic or semi-automatic.

It could be a unique feature I believe.

Thanks!!!

I also am interested. I have some shots of Atlas last night, and significant motion even over an hour.

I am interested also. I'd like to make an animation from the subs. I can save the registered and normalized subs, but am left without a way to batch process a stretch. The only way I see is to set my stretch parameters and toggle off Auto, then open each sub and save the stretched TIF. This is tedious for hundreds of subs, is there any way at all I'm missing to automatically apply the stretch settings to a list of FITs?

I'd love another button or checkbox on the Batch Modify tool, to Apply Stretch to the batch operation.

I am so interested as well for help on processing my subs ! That's comet season and everyone is shooting C/2019 Y4...  😉 

Add me to the list.   Comets are indeed a new favorite target.

Did what James (@ohmey) suggested with a selection of 21 subs (normalized) spread over 5 hours that I manually and individually stretched, saved as JPEG and converted into a GIF... 

Nice GIF! I had significant challenges, with ATLAS already being in my trees when it was dark enough. I took 94x60s mono subs, registered and normalized in APP and batch cropped them a bit. Then I opened one to set my stretch and options on the right side and manually selected and saved each of the 94 subs with the stretch applied as a JPG. (That was a lot of clicking per sub!) Then I used ffmpeg to convert the JPG set to a x.264 MP4 video, and transcoded the video to 1080p resolution.

I'm fairly happy with the results for the data I had, of course it would be much nicer to have a way to batch stretch instead of manually opening and saving each sub individually. It was tedious enough for 94 subs, I don't relish the idea of doing 500, lol! Unfortunately the tree branches degrade the final results a lot but I had no other option, I just had no view of the sky that direction without trees in the way. The dancing diffraction spikes on the brighter stars due to the branches are somewhat entertaining too, but at least the comet itself is nicely visible and moves a good distance in that 90+ minutes.

With the trees and conditions, I didn't bother to switch to my color camera.

I ended up using PI using the "comet align" process. I then used APP to stack the star background and then combined the two.
RASA 11 / ASI094 and  120 seconds x 40.  No darks or flats just lights (as is normal for me).  C/2019 Y4

@rojoyinc

This is Great! Thank you for sharing.

Kijja

@kijja

i made this with T5 of iTelescope, last night in New Mexico. LRGB 4x4x120sec. Processed in APP like a LRGB. The stars stand still and the coment moves a bit i guess? But i like the result. 

Hi Arie, did you use a bias and dark master? Seems like you have some weird background noise going on.

@vincent-mod

no, i alway work with the calibrated ones of iTelescope ;-). But i can do calibrationby myself maybe. As iTelescope is switching from MaximDL to APP, i guess my calibration can't be better ?

If that transition is complete, calibration will be better indeed as that's the whole idea behind it. There is also a new operator at iTelescope who should be able to produce better calibration frames for iTelescope as well.

@vincent-mod

thanks for the suggestion, the result seems better!