Updated module: StarGenerator (2009/12/15)

[Juan Conejero]

Hi all,

A new version of the standard StarGenerator module is now available to all our users. The new version fixes a bug that was  preventing users from entering negative declinations in the range ]-1,0[ on the StarGenerator interface. See this post for more information:

http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=1584.msg8715


Download Files

Download the appropriate module(s) for your platform(s) by right-clicking on the links below and selecting "save file as" or "save link as":

* Linux/X11 32-bit
* Linux/X11 64-bit

* Mac OS X 32-bit

* Windows 32-bit
* Windows 64-bit


Installation Instructions

All Platforms

- If you have PixInsight running, exit all running instances.

- Uncompress the module installation archive (Windows and Mac: a .zip file; Linux: a .tar.gz file).

- Now you have the module file: StarGenerator-pxm.<suffix>, where <suffix> is: .so for Linux; .dylib for Mac OS X; .dll for Windows.

Linux/X11

- Copy the StarGenerator-pxm.so file to your bin installation directory. Assuming you've installed PixInsight under your home directory, the bin directory should be something like $HOME/PixInsight/bin

Mac OS X

- Open your Applications folder with Finder.

- Right-click the PixInsight.app application bundle.

- Select "Show Package Contents" from the context menu.

- A new Finder window opens. Select the Contents/MacOS folder.

- Copy the StarGenerator-pxm.dylib file to the Contents/MacOS folder.

Alternatively, if you don't mind using the terminal, the following single command does the trick:

cp StarGenerator-pxm.dylib /Applications/PixInsight.app/Contents/MacOS

Windows

- Copy the StarGenerator-pxm.dll file to your bin installation folder. Assuming you've installed PixInsight on the default location, the bin folder is: C:\PCL\bin for 32-bit versions; C:\PCL64\bin for 64-bit versions.


=============

I hope you'll like it. Enjoy!

[NKV]

What i doing wrong?

[vicent_peris]

What i doing wrong?

Hello,

SG calculates proper motions of the stars. So you must put the right epoch of your image.


Vicent.

[NKV]

What i doing wrong?

you must put the right epoch of your image.

Vicent, thanks, but it's not help.

What is i doing wrong now? In the attachments animation and settings.
Best regards,
Nikolay.

[Ginge]

Hi there Juan!

I'm having problems installing both this and the Image Registration update. I follow the instructions by opening the contents folder of PixInsight in the application folder, copy the .dylib files into Contents/MacOs. When I subsequently launch PixInsight the module fails to launch and has disappeared from the list of processes.

Any idea of what has gone wrong? I'm on Snow Leopard v10.6.2

Best regards,
Ginge

[vicent_peris]

What i doing wrong?

you must put the right epoch of your image.

Vicent, thanks, but it's not help.

What is i doing wrong now? In the attachments animation and settings.
Best regards,
Nikolay.

To me, this is being a problem with the proper motion calculation... Perhaps Juan can enlight us?


Vicent.

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Nikolay,

Sorry for the late answer. This is pretty weird. As Vicent, my first impression was that this could be a problem with (outstandingly large!) proper motions. Hence I made a series of tests with your coordinates and telescope/camera parameters:

Epoch: 2000 January 01


Epoch: 2010 January 01


Epoch: 2100 January 01


The parameters I've used:


As you can see, the generated star field for 2010 is virtually identical to your real image. There are several stars with relatively large proper motions in this field. It is interesting to compare the first and last images (2000 and 2100 epochs, respectively) to evaluate accumulated proper motions during a century. However, we don't obtain anything similar to your results.

Summarizing: I have no idea of what's happening with your application of StarGenerator. As a sanity procedure, these are the checksums for my PPMX.bin file:

[juan@cygnus 1]$ sha1sum -b PPMX.bin
9a4cafbc795fe50009432781beeeb890d5e49dec *PPMX.bin

[juan@cygnus 1]$ md5sum -b PPMX.bin
d21d3fb34b2c14e2f235aa23fcd3e16e *PPMX.bin

Can you please verify the integrity of your star database file?

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Ginge,

I'm having problems installing both this and the Image Registration update. I follow the instructions by opening the contents folder of PixInsight in the application folder, copy the .dylib files into Contents/MacOs. When I subsequently launch PixInsight the module fails to launch and has disappeared from the list of processes.

What version of PixInsight have you installed? You must have the latest version in order to use the updated modules. For Snow Leopard, you should have version 1.5.9.561.

Let me know if this helps.

[Ginge]

Oh ok, I'm down at v01.05.07.0531. Will update and retry.

Thanks!
Ginge

[NKV]

[juan@cygnus 1]$ md5sum -b PPMX.bin
d21d3fb34b2c14e2f235aa23fcd3e16e *PPMX.bin
Can you please verify the integrity of your star database file?

I have check the control sum. File is OK.

Juan, can I upload to you image for testing?

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Nikolay,

Sure, you can upload it. Let's see if we can discover what's happening here... 

[Ginge]

Juan, I'm feeling kind of dense here, but I can't for the life of me find a download link to the newest commercial version. It is not here: http://www.pixinsight.com/download/index.html and the link to commercial downloads on this page: http://173.205.125.124/ is a 404. What am I missing?

Sincerely,
Ginge

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Ginge,

As a commercial user, you must download commercial versions of PixInsight from our software distribution interface:

http://dist.pixinsight.com/

You need the data (user name and password) of your user account on our file servers. You received that data in the instructions email we sent to you when you purchased your license.

Let me know if you have further problems.

[NKV]

Hi Nikolay,

Sure, you can upload it. Let's see if we can discover what's happening here... 

Done. Look for NGC1499_001Ha.fit
Just try to align the image to generated stars.

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Nikolay,

Thank you for uploading the image (which is excellent, by the way). This is my try with SG and SA:

http://forum-images.pixinsight.com/legacy/SG/20100115/SG_SA_NGC1499.jpg

It's true that I'm using a still unreleased version of SA, but the changes it includes don't affect registration of these images (or they shouldn't). Anyway I'll try to publish the new version of the ImageRegistration module as soon as possible.

However, the problem you're experiencing seems to be in the generation of the synthetic star field (SG), and this is more strange as we are using the same module. Hmmm, let me repeat everything on Windows to see if this is a platform-dependent issue (although I seriously doubt it, but who knows).