Anyone here willing to help me test my project?

[larry lart]

Hi,

 

I started this project back in 2004 as I realize that more and more people get into astrophotography but most will go no further then framing nice pictures. So I thought that it will be good to have a simple to use tool to allow amateur astronomers to do plate-solving(detect and match your image against star catalogs), so they can explore and learn more about these marvelous images so I started to develop this project. Now after literally tens of thousands of development hours you can just load your astrophoto and in a few clicks learn almost everything is known about your image, what are the stars, galaxies, nebulas, radio sources, x-ray/gamma bursts, supernovas, extra solar planets or asteroids, comets and even artificial earth satellites passing through. Also, you can get more advanced information like various measurements available (including spectral) and links to articles/abstracts talking about objects and/in that area in the sky.

 

On top of that I added several tool to help amateur astronomer to better plan his observing session like an on click collection of environmental/weather data, instruments management/control and also an online collaboration interface to allow amateur astronomers to easily exchange/review the data.

 

You can check a preview of my project at: http://larryo.org/work/information/unimap/index.html

 

Anyone interested to help me test it and/or feedback will be appreciated!

 

Larry

[przyssawka]

That looks amazing!

Are you planning to release a MacOS version of it in the future?

[larry lart]

That looks amazing!

Are you planning to release a MacOS version of it in the future?

 

Thank you!

 

The project is written in c++/wxwidgets (cross platform gui library) and that means it can be compiled on other platforms such as linux/mac/etc. Most functionality will work except for the digital cameras interface (and for Mac I am not sure about the video interface either) which is for the moment is windows only. So yes, in the future I will look into rereleasing it for Linux Mac osX as well.

 

Larry

[maciek2512]

It's better than google earth !!!!!!!!!

you are really good.

[larry lart]

There is something else I want to add … my future plans with this project is to release it free and opensource (for windows, linux and perhaps macosx)… if all goes well, I mean if people show interest in it and it’s workable and from there I might be looking for sponsorship at some point to support a big central database though which amateur astronomers from all over the world can share image resolved with astrometry data etc. So maybe now you can also understand what am I doing here as well …

 

Also, I am working now to convert the code to unicode so it will support various translations and if someone here whishes to help me with the translation as well that will be great!

 

Larry

[larry lart]

I apologize for the delay as my life got slightly complicated lately.

You can download and test the very first pre-alpha release from here:

 

http://larryo.org/work/information/unimap/test0/unimap_setup_pa_0.exe

 

I know there are still bugs and room for of improvements, optimization, etc. "Unfortunately" I have built this application so big and I got so little time lately that I should probably focus on getting the core functionality working right and here any suggestions and ideas will really help.

 

It is compiled on XP. On windows 7 you might encounter crashes (mostly due to file/io permissions) – I will get them fixed as soon as I will get some time.

 

Larry

[larry lart]

A new version has been released with:

 

- updated the star common names list with a better one

- added extension files one and two to tycho2

- added map for common names with tycho2

- fixed 2mass catalog names display error

- fixed show/hide all objects from menu->view objects

- fixed search in spiral - which is now set default as it's faster (instead of swipe)

- added a simple method to check/notify on updates

- some minor bug fixes

 

Also, note that now there is a forum on the site to discuss more in depth the technical problems.

 

Anyone here test it yet ?

 

Larry

[larry lart]

I am wondering if people here find this application useful? At the concept level what do you think I should change/add to improve it?

[Hans]

Hi Larry,

 

Your unimap software is working stable. I did not have any crashes or hangs. It is not easy to give a helpful feedback without full understanding of tested software. I tried to use it few times but it was not easy to recognise what I am doing wrong. It means is really not easy for me to give you the helpful feedback (please take into consideration, also language barrier can be a obstacle for feedback from the forum users).

 

Unclear cases:

 

- hardware setup. Lists of CCD equipment is empty and it is not fully clear what is wrong/ what software expects. It is a missing database, a bug, or table which should be filled by user? It works well for digital cameras but after selecting astro cameras detailed fields are empty and is not clear what to do. I see potential problem here. If user will put an unknow CCD for your software , is no place to set a camera gain. At this moment the photometry and basic matching can be highly impacted by this.

 

- Was impossible for me to matching my frames in your software. I tried .FIT , RAW and .jpg types and different catalogues (Your automated downloader is really nice!) Every time (also using hints) unimap was not able to recognise the sky position. Strange, because having .fit file should be possible for algorithm to recognise FOV, exposition time and magnitudo border (in fact also center of image position). It means, I do not recognised how it works

 

Log from one of attempts:

 

 

 

10:54:27 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Loading DSO names ...

 

10:54:27 12/07/2010 :: DEBUG :: dso names loaded in 0.0

 

10:54:27 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Loading star names ...

 

10:54:28 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Loading constellations names ...

 

10:54:28 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Loading MESSIER to NGC/IC map ...

 

10:54:28 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Loading DSO Messier catalog ...

 

10:54:28 12/07/2010 :: DEBUG :: DSO Messier catalog(110 objects) was loaded in 0.0 seconds

 

10:54:28 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Loading DSO NGC catalog ...

 

10:54:28 12/07/2010 :: DEBUG :: DSO NGC catalog(7840 objects) was loaded in 0.16 seconds

 

10:54:28 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Loading DSO IC catalog ...

 

10:54:28 12/07/2010 :: DEBUG :: DSO IC catalog(5386 objects) was loaded in 0.15 seconds

 

10:54:28 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Loading constellations ...

 

10:55:06 12/07/2010 :: WARNING :: Caught Exiv2 exception =13463732

 

10:55:06 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: image zmienne-001L.fit doesn't have a profile

 

10:55:25 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Object detection has started...

 

10:55:25 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Detection started on 2010-07-12 at 10:55:25 running on 0 thread

 

10:55:25 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Setting catalog parameters

 

10:55:25 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Reading detection filter

 

10:55:25 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Initialize classification engine...

 

10:55:25 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Reading classification engine configuration...

 

10:55:25 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Detection done in 0 seconds

 

10:55:25 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Found 103 objects

 

10:55:25 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: end of object detection

 

10:57:08 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Fetching area orig(240.00,-80.80) with radius=1.72...

 

10:57:10 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: Loading file for area orig(240.00,-80.80) with radius=1.72...

 

10:57:10 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: loaded 623 stars

 

10:57:10 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: start looking for a match

 

10:57:10 12/07/2010 :: INFO :SS: zoom in at level=0

 

10:57:10 12/07/2010 :: INFO :SS: zoom in at level=1

 

10:57:10 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: LESS no of stars found=3 then orig=-1

 

10:57:10 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: LESS no of stars found=3 then orig=-1

 

10:57:10 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: LESS no of stars found=3 then orig=-1

 

10:57:10 12/07/2010 :: INFO :SS: zoom in at level=2

 

10:57:10 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: LESS no of stars found=3 then orig=-1

 

10:57:11 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: LESS no of stars found=3 then orig=-1

 

10:57:11 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: LESS no of stars found=3 then orig=-1

 

10:57:11 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: LESS no of stars found=3 then orig=-1

 

10:57:11 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: LESS no of stars found=3 then orig=-1

 

10:57:12 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: LESS no of stars found=3 then orig=-1

 

10:57:12 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: LESS no of stars found=3 then orig=-1

 

10:57:12 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: LESS no of stars found=3 then orig=-1

 

10:57:12 12/07/2010 :: INFO :SS: zoom in at level=3

 

10:57:13 12/07/2010 :: INFO :: LESS no of stars found=3 then orig=-1

 

10:57:14 12/07/2010 :: INFO :SS: zoom in at level=4

 

10:57:19 12/07/2010 :: INFO :SS: zoom in at level=5

 

10:57:26 12/07/2010 :: INFO :SS: zoom in at level=6

 

Regards

[larry lart]

- hardware setup. Lists of CCD equipment is empty and it is not fully clear what is wrong/ what software expects. It is a missing database, a bug, or table which should be filled by user?

 

Yes, I need to reset the astro/ccd equipment database - I lost this file (and some of the telescope definitions on a hdd crash). Setting can also be added manually in the ini files (under data/hardware) which are in plain text.

 

- Was impossible for me to matching my frames in your software. I tried .FIT , RAW and .jpg types and different catalogues (Your automated downloader is really nice!) Every time (also using hints) unimap was not able to recognise the sky position. Strange, because having .fit file should be possible for algorithm to recognise FOV, exposition time and magnitudo border (in fact also center of image position). It means, I do not recognised how it works

 

I have few problems with the fits ever since I upgraded the cfitsio library and did the unicode conversion - one is downsampling from 16/32 for displaying which is not working right and the other is reading the header info. The second issue I know exactly where/how to fix, for the first I need to investigate a little bit more. However all this should be fixed in the next update - which I plan to release in a month (or maybe earlier if I get the free time to work on it).

 

Can you please send/email me a few of your images you have problems with in jpg format? Send them at unimap@larryo.org. I will check to see why they don't solve.

 

Many thanks for feedback!

 

Larry

[larry lart]

Version 0.0.2 pre-alpha is now available for download from:

 

http://larryo.org/work/information/unimap/download.html

 

Larry

[larry lart]

Version 0.0.3 pre-alpha is now available for download from:

 

http://larryo.org/work/information/unimap/download.html

 

Larry

[Gość Gość]

I have also added two small video tutorials (basic) here:

http://larryo.org/work/information/unimap/support.html

 

I am not sure if this format is ok, feedback will help before I go on to make better tutorials.

 

Larry