admin wrote:You got some lovely detail in there Gordon!
The resolution might possbily be a bit too high for the real 1:1 data content. Binning could potentially let you push decon a bit further, bringing out the central star (the 'giant' white dwarf). I personally love seeing it in this object as it puts what you're seeing into context. This whole 'thing' here came from that tiny dot!
I have to admit, I simply didn't pay attention to it. I was intent on noise reduction and finding the fainter outer cloud as best i could...and just didn't even think about the core as much as I should/could have. You are, of course, absolutely right...binning would help here.
Good to see you post here again too - for a little while I thought we had lost you to the 'dark side'...
No chance, Ivo.
I've said before...my Start Menu has plenty of room for more than one tool.
Even the "old" or "simple" tools still have a place in my Start Menu. StarTools and PixInsight will BOTH do a fantastic job of masking and then adding color to stars. But you know what? Noel Carboni's astronomy actions for PhotoShop still has a simple 1-click tool that does it more quickly, with fewer steps, and at least as well as either of them. So...guess what. PhotoShop stays in my tool bag, with Noel's actions loaded and ready to go.
Point being, imo at least, I think having several different pieces of software that each have value to me for some task or another is a blessing, not a curse. StarTools will ALWAYS be one of them. There are certain things it does easier, faster, simpler, better, or cleaner...at least in my hands...than anything else available. And I think, for me anyway, that's really the point. This isn't...or at least shouldn't be imo...an argument about who does what "better", or whether so and so software can/can't do things. I'd wager, truth be told, if one really go down to the math of it, there's not a single thing that ANY of the astronomy packages can do that the others just can't. I mean..it's just pixels, right?
But each has certain things that it does in a way that seems more intuitive, or in a way that takes less time, or fewer clicks, or has better defaults, than the others.
Example:
You said the other day to show you a place where PixInsight's DBE does a better job than Wipe. I can't. Not only do I doubt very seriously that it CAN do a better job, even if it could, I'm not smart enough with either tool to prove it.
But DBE works "better" for ME. I can do a couple of quick things, click a button, and get a result I like. Wipe takes me...and has since day one...lots of tweaking and playing and moving sliders and do-overs and try-agains. I wipe, I AutoDev, I undo, I wipe again. (Though, admittedly, adding the Temp AutoDev will help that a BUNCH). Can I do what I want with Wipe? Sure. But I, at least, find myself spending 10 minutes doing it, whereas DBE takes me 30 seconds.
On the flip side, however, I have looked and looked and looked for a good way to tighten up stars in PI. I've found about a dozen methods...and 1-2 of them even work. But holy crap! The "best" method I've found so far involves launching a tool, adding a "way" to it (whatever the **** a "way" is...not exactly intuitive, folks), then defining some pattern thing for each "way", and you have to have a square pattern for one, and a cross for the other, then you adjust some completely greek values, and then apply.
In StarTools, I go make a star mask, hit the button with the Big and little star on it, and...done. What could be simpler?
And let's not even talk about actually WARPING stars when you've got a poorly tracked data set.
So no...you haven't and will never "lose me to the Dark Side". You may, however, have to forgive me if I occasionally have dinner with them.
Today though I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions paying customers of suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened. StarTools got its first crack published!
It's a true coming of age for an application if someone takes the time to crack it - we've done well!
(never mind that cracking this not-for-profit application is totally unnecessary, but you can't argue with stupid...
)
Dude! That's...um...great
... news!
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You did say not long ago you always wanted to find ways to improve...so I DO have a challenge for you. I bring it up here because, as I said above, I felt like I wanted these reds just a bit deeper or darker...and in my clumsy hands, I find that easier with PI.
If you're familiar with PixInsight's Color Saturation tool...the one with the line across the color spectrum, and you can freeze certain positions, and raise or lower others, to do extremely targeted saturation boosts...if you could introduce something similar to StarTools, I for one would consider that an improvement. For MY tastes, "Red", "Green", and "Blue" in the current color module are a little broad. I have difficulty figuring out how to boost, say, Orange. I know it's obviously some combination of the sliders, but the right combination doesn't leap to mind for me.
