| review: CCD CMOS camera control and image processing software Astroart 2.0 ( appr. € 160,- ) |
The CCD software Astroart 2.0 replaced *all* other software I ever needed for ccd imaging, image processing and telescope control.
It is extremely useful and reliable and the cheap price is another big plus.
To see a full description of all the features of the version 2.0 please visit the homepage of Astroart.
I will only describe the features which are most important for my work.
CCD control
Taking pictures with Astroart is realized through plug-ins.
The big advantage of this concept is that you do not have to re-install the program when a new or changed CCD control is available.
I used the MX516 plug-in for the parallel version of this Starlight Express camera.
Now I changed to the USB version only by changing the plug-in.
The plug-ins are very sophisticated for the special needs of the camera type.
I can use a special hiresolution mode of the camera, for example.
Another special feature of the MX-cameras is to be able to self-guide the telescope.
This means I can take the actual exposure and the subsequent guiding frames with *the same* ccd frame.
Filter wheels, additional guiders like ST4 or webcams is also supported in a very useful way.
No need to tell that you can control the time of exposure, for a single or an automated sequence of exposures.
You can use the full frame or download only a portion which is useful for planetary images.
Of course you have a sophisticated focus window - with binning of 4 or 9 pixels in focus mode you have a perfect finder window in almost realtime.
Telescope control
Astroart now can control any LX200 compatible GOTO mount.
This feature can also be used to fine control the telescope tracking during long exposures.
With auto- or selfguiding this is done automatically.
In addition to all the goto-features you know from the original LX200 you can create your own goto-lists with the objects you plan to image this night.
Image processing
The image processing features include all kinds of filters ever needed for the average amateur astronomer like me.
A very nice feature is the Maximum Entropy filter.
Here you can calculate a special filter simply by marking a rectangle arround a star with tracking or other errors.
Astroart calculates the point spread failure of that star and then compensates the whole image according to that error.
This can save a long exposure when there is a little guiding error.
A big time-saver is the pre-processing tool.
With this tool you can do all necessary basic steps of image processing on lists of images.
Simply drag and drop the list of images to a box, add the corresponding dark / bias / flat frames and tell the tool if you want to average, sum, dead-pixel correct (or whatever) the single images.
Press OK and on the fly your images are co-registered and processed giving one resulting image.
You can greatly improve the signal/noise-ratio of all images resulting in much better response to unsharp mask or other enhancements.
Another nice feature is the mosaic tool.
I used it to create an image of the full moon which is 12 times bigger than a single frame of my camera.
The tool helps perfect for co-registering the single frames.
Very important is the LRGB tool to create color images out of a luminance frame with full resolution and maximum of signal/noise-ratio and red/green/blue frames of less resolution.
Star Atlas
Astroart programmers express that this tool is not a planetarium tool.
This is true but for me it is very helpful.
I use it to identify the field of view on my exposures.
There are all Messier, NGC and IC objects.
For stars down to Magnitude 15 or so the actual magnitude is shown.
You can match the size, rotation, star size and field of view of this tool so that it almost looks like the exposure.
This makes it very easy to identify patterns of stars - much easier as in my planetarium software.
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