PixInsight Workshop at Adler Planetarium, Chicago

[vicent_peris]

Hello all,

This is an official announcement. I'll be giving a workshop on image processing with PixInsight at Adler Planetarium (Chicago) from September 10th to 12th. The Adler Planetarium sits on the edge of the lake in downtown Chicago: http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/

Some of the hot topics we'll speak about are:

• Advanced data reduction techniques:
  - Understanding the ImageCalibration and ImageIntegration tools.
  - Superflat techniques.
  
• Color calibration.
• The new HDRComposition module.
• In-depth review of the HDRWT tool and its associated techniques.
• H-alpha mixing techniques.

The workshop will have capacity for a maximum of about 25 attendees.

We'll work mainly with data from the attendees. We'll set up a dedicated FTP account where the participants will be allowed to upload their data. I'll be reviewing all the data from the attendees during Summer to prepare the workshop.

Registration, rates and agenda, as well as other useful information, will be available as soon as possible. Meanwhile you can contact me at vicent(dot)peris(at)uv(dot)es or vicent(dot)peris(at)pixinsight(dot)com

Best regards,
Vicent.

[mmirot]

Please put me on the list. I will definitely come to see you.

Max

[vicent_peris]

Hi all,

we have put an information webpage about the workshop in the PixInsight website, including detailed program and registration information. You van access the information at this address:

http://pixinsight.com/workshops/adler-2010


Best regards,
Vicent.

[DonW]

Hi Vicent,

I'm very glad to hear that you will be giving these talks.  For those of us who can't get to Chicago,  are there any plans to either televise them (internet) or record them and make them available by DVD?  I very much want to hear the latest on how to process LRGBHa.

Don

[pfile]

2nding the request for online or offline video of these talks... can't get to chicago, too far.

[Nocturnal]

For some reason the page http://pixinsight.com/workshops/adler-2010 loads very poorly in Firefox 3.6 . The bottom part flickers and overlays the content. Seems someone got a little fancy with the css. Interestingly IE shows the page much better except it thinks there's no end to the page so you can keep scrolling downward.

[sleshin]

I'm using Firefox 3.6.6 on a windoze 7 64 bit machine and seems to load fine.

Steve

[Nocturnal]

Yeah, on my 'big' machine it displays better but it still flashes at the bottom when I scroll down. I'm pretty sure you'll see the same thing. Something is wrong with the code.

[Carlos Milovic]

Yeah, it flashes here too when scrolling down. Firefox 3.6.4 + Fedora 13 64b.

[Juan Conejero]

The bottom part flickers and overlays the content

This is a Firefox performance issue; I am aware of it. The flickering is a very minor problem with a reasonably powerful machine but can be ugly with slow ones.

Try Opera 10.6. It is fully standards compliant, as Firefox, but much faster. There is absolutely no flicker with Opera navigating our website. I must say the same about Konqueror, but unfortunately it is part of KDE and hence is only available on X11.

Interestingly IE shows the page much better except it thinks there's no end to the page so you can keep scrolling downward

This is an IE bug. The problem is that IE does not know how to compute the true page height when the body element occupies the whole available space, and this property has been set through CSS. The height CSS property of both the html and body elements is set to 100% in pixinsight.com. I know this problem and will try to find a solution when I have other priority tasks completed (as 1.6.1 for example). I think this isn't urgent because other than being a bit surprising it doesn't prevent the user from navigating the site. Safari has exactly the same bug, by the way (surprising?).

Seems someone got a little fancy with the css

Indeed. If you analyze pixinsight.com internally you'll see it's quite sophisticated. I still have to tune it to work well with a few misarable browsers, that's all.

[Nocturnal]

Right, firefox is a miserable browser. Djeez

[Juan Conejero]

No. IE is miserable. Safari is poor in some aspects. Firefox is great but has some performance issues. Opera is great and fast and has some font rendering issues. That's all, more or less

[Nocturnal]

In any case, back to the topic at hand. I was wondering if the workshop will only use professional data or also data that's more in line with what us mere mortals deal with?

[Juan Conejero]

The workshop will use data from the attendees. See the 'Workshop Methodology' section on the workshop page. Vicent will review all the data uploaded to our ftp server during August (each registered attendee will have a personal account), and the workshop will use that data. Professional data are too bad for a workshop; we don't want to scare people 

[vicent_peris]

In any case, back to the topic at hand. I was wondering if the workshop will only use professional data or also data that's more in line with what us mere mortals deal with?

Hi Sander,

as the information webpage says:

Workshop Methodology

This workshop has been conceived with a special focus on the active participation of the attendees. Each registered participant will be provided with a personal FTP account on our file servers, where he/she will be able to upload raw data that will be worked out during the workshop. In this way the participants will have the opportunity to apply and understand the concepts and techniques described in the context of their particular imaging conditions.

Workshop methodology, IMHO, must be deeply reviewed. I will do, as is usual, some presentations of my techniques using my own data.  But it's *very* important to work with data from the attendees, because this gives practical solution to real problems on the imaging workflow of the attendees. In other words, I'm not telling you how I deal with my data, but how you can deal with your own data.

Think that you're not paying $200 for a 12 hour workshop. I'm going to do a hard work with all the data during august, and this means a lot of hours processing them.


Best regards,
Vicent.