StarTools

Hi Ivo,

As you know I'm just a newbie... One that is VERY impressed by the quality of this software... Well I guess that being a newbie, getting impressed easily is a prerogative... But I'm even more impressed by your dedication to this "cause"... I've been reading the Forums and found a recent post where you say you're just a one man show handling all this. Well let me tell you you're doing a hell of a job!!!

Having said that, and since this is "Feature Requests", I think there is still a bit of confusion (to a newbie, that is) when you open an image and have to choose from the four options, mainly the "was bayered, not whitebalanced" vs. "wasn't bayered is whitebalanced" dilemma. How about adding a stacking module to let startools handle all of the issues that might cause problems in the processing stage. I'm thinking of artifacts, whitebalance, missing flats alerts, best file format for processing, maybe efective memory alocation management, etc, etc...

Well, that's just my two cents... One last thing, please keep up your AWESOME work... What you are doing for amateur astrophotography (and in that aspect astronomy) is HUGE... You're actually letting regular people have a go (and succeed) in looking outside this sphere we call Earth...

Cheers, my friend!!!

Been waiting for Ivo to chime in here as at one point there was much discussion and progress on a stacking program. Another user, khyperia, did some interesting work on this. See this thread http://www.startools.org/forum/viewtopi ... +deviation
I dont know if anything new has been done. Khyperia, as I understand it, is a student, and possibly doesnt have the time or funds to work on this. Perfectly understandable. Ivo, any news here??
Che

First off, thanks Eduardo for the praise and letting me know that the StarTools project is doing what it set out to do; opening up the night sky for a lot more people. Your praise means a lot and really keeps me going.

Cheman wrote:Been waiting for Ivo to chime in here as at one point there was much discussion and progress on a stacking program. Another user, khyperia, did some interesting work on this. See this thread http://www.startools.org/forum/viewtopi ... +deviation
I dont know if anything new has been done. Khyperia, as I understand it, is a student, and possibly doesnt have the time or funds to work on this. Perectly understandable. Ivo, any news here??
Che

Unfortunately I don't have much to report on this. The stacking solution discussed is firmly in khyperia's court - it's no small project. I've discussed making this worth his while through funding and making sure he picks a suitable software licensing scheme so that the code remains his (or is at least credited to him). Perhaps an alternative could be to liaise with the creators of DSS, Nebulosity and/or PixInsight to get their stacking solutions to output the data required?

Dear Ivo,

there is a very powerful stacking software called Theli.
https://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/theli/

Maybe it's worth to look into if you think about liaising with other software.

CS
Stephan

stw wrote:Dear Ivo,

there is a very powerful stacking software called Theli.
https://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/theli/

Maybe it's worth to look into if you think about liaising with other software.

CS
Stephan

Thanks for the link Stefan! Theli is powerful indeed, but I'd be looking for a multi-platform approach, possibly a bit more turn-key in the interest of accessibility for new users. StarTools has been garnering some interest from the scientific community recently, so there may be something in your suggestion of looking in that direction...