M42, SER files and Linux

A DMK was placed at the Newtonian focus of an f/5, 6" Newtonian, on a Star Discovery AZ, GOTO mount. A 200 frame, 1s exposure SER file was captured using Nicola Mackin's AstroDMx Capture for Linux on a Linux Mint laptop. The SER file was stacked in Autostakkert! 2 running in Wine, and the resulting 16bit TIFF file was post-processed in the Gimp 2.9.

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for Linux, showing M42/43

M43/42 trapezium region

16 bit capture to TIFF and SER files will be implemented before release of the software. This will be of greater values when cameras delivering 12 bits and 16 bits are implemented. Capture cards that offer 16 bit RGB, unfortunately only give 16 bits across all three colour channels 5-6-5 bits per R-G-B, whereas 8 bit RGB gives 24 bits across all three colour channels, 8-8-8 bits per R-G-B.

SER file capture with AstroDMx Capture for Linux and the Moon

AstroDMx Capture for Linux now has the ability to capture SER movie files as well as AVI files and TIFF images. The advantage of SER over AVI is that it is possible to save 16 bit images in the SER container. In this experiment, 8 bit images of the 79% waning, gibbous Moon were captured in a SER file through an f/5, 80mm ED refractor with a LUCKY ZOOM HD CMOS camera at the prime focus of the telescope. The software was set to map the YUYV video stream to monochrome by using only the luminance information in the video stream, thus using the colour camera as a monochrome camera.
The SER file was stacked in Autostakkert!2 in Wine, wavelet processed in Registax 6, and processed in The Gimp 2.9.

79% waning gibbous Moon

Full size image (2626 x 1952)