DVS now has a new Astrometry module that allows you to measure the movement of an object between a pair of images. You can use this to calculate velocities of asteroids, comets, minor planets, satellites, etc. It can also be used to measure object parallax angle during transits such as the 2012 Venus transit. (more…)
I know there are a lot of users waiting for DSSR to be able to autoguide Alt-Az scopes using AzTrak. The good news is that the DSSR test version now has a working version of AzTrak which is accurate enough for Solar System targets.
AzTrak autoguided on a sunspot with a Celestron Nexstar 4SE for several hours yesterday and we are currently fine tuning the AzTrak algorithms to improve accuracy. We hope to release AzTrak very soon.
Here are some sunspot videos made with AzTrak
DVS now allows you to display time stamps on each frame of your animations for an accurate display of capture time. DVS can read the capture times directly from DSSR images or you can simply set the start and end times for your animation. Prefixes and suffixes can also be added to the time stamp. The relevant section from the DVS manual is copied below: (more…)
This tutorial was produced to show the work flow involved in creating these solar animations.
You can download a zipped folder of solar Fits files to try out from here (190mb). Go direct to step 4 if you download them. Alternatively, you can download the complete set of processed PNGs here (59mb) and go directly to step 5. (more…)
Below is a quick lunar mosaic captured by DSSR after focusing by DFM. It shows nice detail from a Nexstar 4SE 4″ telescope with 2.5x PowerMate which results from accurate and objective focusing. There is even a hint of the central rill in the Vallis Alpes – I think (see detail below). Click on the image for the full size version or check out the Zoomit version.
I was lucky to record 4 hours of unbroken solar activity during Scotland’s recent record breaking sunshine. DSSR guided my Nexstar 4SE/PST combo while it also captured 20s videos with 20s pauses between. These videos were processed in AviStack and DVS was then used to stablize the animations and add the overlay text and scale Earth.
This was the first ‘blind’ test of DFM and I relied totally on the focus meter to adjst focus. I made 3 animations from the data which are below. (right-click on videos to turn on looping) (more…)
DVS user Sylvain Weiller recently capture a few hundred thousand frames of Mars. Unfortunately, he did not use DSSR’s autoguider during capture so the planet’s disk was moving around a lot during the sequence. We worked with Sylvain to allow DVS to handle huge image sets like his and these new features are detailed in the latest manual in the support page. (more…)
From Robert,
Taken with Coronado SolarMaxII 60mm with BF15, Meade 3x Barlow, DMK41AU02, Celestron CGEM mount, captured as 20s clips with 40s delay using DSSR, processed in Registax 5, aligned and cropped using DVS. (more…)
