We are glad to announce the release of a new version of our CometAlignment module: 1.3.5 for Linux, macOS and Windows. The CometAlignment tool has been designed to align fast–moving objects, such as asteroids and comets, interactively among the stars. The process also allows you to perform subtraction operations among frames to obtain images of the star field without the comet or a starless comet.
The initial version of the CometAlignment module was written by Nikolay Volkov back in 2012. The new version we have released today is a complete redesign and reimplementation with significant improvements and new features:
This new version of the CometAlignment module is now available as an update to the current PixInsight 1.8.9-1 version on all supported platforms. We have also released the first version of its reference documentation, authored by Edoardo Luca Radice:
pixinsight.com
Finally, here is a presentation video on our official YouTube channel:
We hope you like this new release and find it helpful in producing fantastic comet images. Enjoy!
The initial version of the CometAlignment module was written by Nikolay Volkov back in 2012. The new version we have released today is a complete redesign and reimplementation with significant improvements and new features:
- Support for nonlinear comet paths (curved or irregular trajectories). The user can now select fixed frames where the comet position can be defined interactively.
- CometAlignment can now be applied to unregistered frames, avoiding double interpolations. This is possible thanks to the possibility of defining the comet nucleus position on individual frames.
- Comet nucleus centroids are now calculated by optimal PSF fitting. This leads to a significant improvement in registration accuracy, which in turn improves resolution and SNR in the resulting integrated images.
- Comet path masks are generated as graphical representations of the comet's path measured on aligned frames. These masks can be used directly on input frames to analyze the comet trajectory visually.
- CometAlignment engine entirely rewritten with significant improvements in the tool's GUI and its multithreaded execution.
This new version of the CometAlignment module is now available as an update to the current PixInsight 1.8.9-1 version on all supported platforms. We have also released the first version of its reference documentation, authored by Edoardo Luca Radice:
PixInsight Reference Documentation | CometAlignment
This tool is designed to interactively align fast–moving objects among the stars, such as asteroids and comets. The Process also allows you to perform subtraction operations between frames to obtain images of the star field without the comet or a starless comet.
pixinsight.com
Finally, here is a presentation video on our official YouTube channel:
We hope you like this new release and find it helpful in producing fantastic comet images. Enjoy!