It did take a long time to have the work finished on this and it will have a major performance boost of 30-50% over 2.0.0-beta39 from calibration to integration. We extensively optimized many critical parts of APP. All has been tested to guarantee correct optimizations. Drizzle and image resampling is much faster for instance, those modules have been completely rewritten. Much less memory usage. LNC 2.0 will be released which works much better and faster than LNC in it's current state. And more, all will be added to the release notes in the coming weeks...
Update on the 2.0.0 release & the full manual
We are getting close to the 2.0.0 stable release and the full manual. The manual will soon become available on the website and also in PDF format. Both versions will be identical and once released, will start to follow the APP release cycle and thus will stay up-to-date to the latest APP version.
Once 2.0.0 is released, the price for APP will increase. Owner's license holders will not need to pay an upgrade fee to use 2.0.0, neither do Renter's license holders.
Hello Mabula, when calibrating images a strange result has come out. No idea what went wrong. Could it be related to it, because I have the internal Darkframe function of the EOS 6D used. As against test I calibrated the pictures in Pixinsight, since everything looks normal.
I notice from the screenshots that you only calibrate the light frames with a master flat.
For flat-field calibration to work properly, both lights and flats need to have the bias pedestal subtracted by calibrating the flats and lights with either a masterbias or a masterdark.
Did you calibrate the flats with a masterbias or masterdark?
The fatframes I have calibrated / integrated with a Masterbias to a masterflat.
What just have done this time is the internal Darkframe deduction of the camera with the Lightframes. Otherwise, I only make a bias deduction and dithering. I have it tested again, with the same result.
What just have done this time is the internal Darkframe deduction of the camera with the Lightframes. Otherwise, I only make a bias deduction and dithering. I have it tested again, with the same result.
Okay, the failing flat calibration then probably occurs due to the camera subtracting more or less data than would happen normally.
Using the internal dark frame substraction is something you really don't want to use since you can simply create the darks yourself. The internal camera dark subtraction will subtract a single darks from each light frame. Each dark that is subtracted is different and of much worse quality then a masterdark which is created from let's say 10 normal dark frames. So using internal dark frame subtraction will give you worse results then using a masterdark composed of several darks.
To investigate what's exactly happening, I would need to see a normal light frame, a bias frame a dark frame and a light frame with the internla dark frame subtraction. Then it will become clear where the difference is resulting in faulty flat-field calibration.
Hello Mabula, have found the problem for the strange
calibration result. The internal dark image subthraction of the EOS 6D, apparently does not make a bias deduction. When calibrating the lightframes with passential
Hello Mabula, I've done some integrations and with Bayer Drizzle I've seen most of the details. Only sometimes had to struggle with some artifacts. After a few tests I found the best setting with Square Kernel and no distortion correction.
Hello Mabula, have found the problem for the strange
calibration result. The internal dark image subthraction of the EOS 6D, apparently does not make a bias deduction. When calibrating the lightframes with passential
Masterbias, the result looked very good.
Hi minusman,
Thank you for your feedback. I have never tested what happened when you use the internal dark frame subtraction.
So if you make bias frames with internal dark frame subtraction then you can properly calibrate the data?
My advise would be to not use internal dark frame subtraction, because it will inject much more noise in your integration compared to using a masterdark created out of several darks. The masterdakrk that is subtracted internally is much noisier then the masterdark that you can create form 10 darks for instance. And this noise is injected into your lights when you perfrom dark frame subtraction.
Hello Mabula, I've done some integrations and with Bayer Drizzle I've seen most of the details. Only sometimes had to struggle with some artifacts. After a few tests I found the best setting with Square Kernel and no distortion correction.
Hi minusman,
A recommended setting for bayer drizzle would be to keep
the scale of the integration on 1.0
and use drizzle droplets o2-2.5 pixels.
The droplet size determines the noise and the sharpness. The bigger the droplets, the lower the noise, the less sharpness. So smaller drops will increase noise and sharpness.
This is always the case when you use drizzle integration. It's a choise between noise and sharpness.
The square kernel usually is less noisy, but can give some more artefacts in my experience than for instance the top hat kernel. The top hat kernel will be smoother and sharper then the square kernel normally. Maybe a bit noisier as well 😉
If you get good results without distortion correction, then yes, don't enable it 😉 then the registration is faster and should be vry robust. Distortion correction is something that you should only enable if you see large registration RMS errors, that usually means values larger than 0.3 pixel. Then it's a clear indication that the data needs optical distortion correction.
The brighter picture is without internal darkframe. The slightly darker picture is with Internal Darkframe. I somehow can not detect any major noise with internal dark frame correction. Do I have to explore further?
The brighter picture is without internal darkframe. The slightly darker picture is with Internal Darkframe. I somehow can not detect any major noise with internal dark frame correction. Do I have to explore further?
A noise analysis should confirm if the noise is lower or higher. You refer to "major noise". Do you mean hot pixels with that? Yes they will be corrected with the internal dark frame, but it's much more important what happens to Gaussian noise in your lights.
If you load a dark subtracted frame and a frame that is subtracted by a masterdark from 10 darks, then you can check the noise values (by proccesing up until and including step 5) and see how they compare. That should probably give you the answer.
