@malcircuit@thingy.social
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malcircuit

@malcircuit@thingy.social

Fledgling trans girl that likes to talk nerdy, perform tech wizardry, do mad science, post occasional anti-capitalist and climate-rage induced rants, and show off her latest Lego builds. There will be selfies.

Swears like a sailor, so you best be okay with that.

My views are my own and are likely wrong.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

malcircuit, to astrophotography
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Immediately runs to buy BlurXterminator

The fact that it claimed to be "AI-powered" made me extremely skeptical of BlurXterminator, but now that I understand how this tool works on a technical level, I'm sold.

https://www.youtube.com/live/5_Dg7bYu-E8

malcircuit,
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Also, a part of me is immediately like, "Oh that's what the secret sauce is? I could probably figure out how to do that." 🤔

malcircuit,
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The guy probably just wrote some code to generate randomly varying point spread functions, made a training data set by filtering a set of known images with the PSFs, and then training a neural net on the data. It's not a trivial task, but it's also not insanely difficult.

Like, the tool was made by one guy (I think?), so it can't be too difficult. It's more that most people don't have the technical skills to do it. I probably could (given sufficient time, which is the rub).

malcircuit,
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I wonder if there's a calibration method to determine the PSF of your optical system. Like, in the same way that you take bias, dark, and flat frames to calibrate, there might be a different set of images you could take to get the PSF. 🤔

malcircuit,
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Initial instinct is to make a cover for the telescope with a hole that's smaller than the spatial resolution of your telescope and shine a light through it to make a point. That's probably harder than it sounds, and it only measures the PSF at a single point. There's probably a more intelligent and mathy method to get the PSF across the entire focal plane through. More research needed.

malcircuit, to astrophotography
@malcircuit@thingy.social avatar

Currently browsing Google Scholar to see whether it's possible to measure and model light pollution at a specific location in such a way to be able to calibrate it away.

Probably more trouble than it's worth (like most of my ideas), but I'm intrigued by the possibility.

malcircuit, to random
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The simple pleasure of putting on a pair of pants that are freshly out of the dryer and toasty

malcircuit, to random
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It begins.

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/md/md0163.html

malcircuit, to random
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Them: All of these new regulations could make cars to expensive for the average consumer.

Me: Maybe that's the way it should always have been.

malcircuit,
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Them: But that's not a good thing! I need a car to survive!

Me: Yeah, and who made the world that way? Why is a $40k, 3000 lb steel and plastic semi-autonomous behemoth the only practical method for transportation and getting necessities like groceries? Who made that decision?

malcircuit,
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Them: But I need my car/truck/SUV because MY FREEDOM

Me: What about my freedom to be able to get around and simply exist without being required to own, maintain, and insure an automobile? Freedom means MORE choices, not fewer.

malcircuit,
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Them: We can't bulld trains! That would be so expensive!

Me: Please remind me again how much of our tax dollars we spend as a country on cleaning, repairing, repaving, and improving existing roadways? Remind me again how many people die on roadways every year? What about the healthcare cost of exhaust, dust, and other pollution from cars? Time lost in traffic? What's the economic impact of all of that?

malcircuit, to random
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Wait until they find out what estradiol does for your hair health

malcircuit, to astrophotography
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Did the überstack of all of the M81 data I have from the past several weeks. It worked out pretty well! So much cleaner.

malcircuit,
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Part of me is still like, "Keep tweaking it! You can make it better!" but at this point it would be only marginal improvements and probably not worth the effort.

It's probably the best image I've made so far. I've done enough.

thomasfuchs, to astrophotography
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

dusty galaxies

malcircuit,
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@thomasfuchs Holy crap! Wow!

What are the stacking details (integration time, etc), if you don't mind me asking? I'm asking because I'm trying to figure out how much of your fantastic image quality (vs mine) is due to longer integration time, how much is the clearer air you have, and how much is just having a better camera.

malcircuit,
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@thomasfuchs Well, I just got 240 x 2 min (8 hours) stack of M81 Lum last night, so I'll see what mine looks like in comparison.

malcircuit, to astrophotography
@malcircuit@thingy.social avatar

I realized what it is about the eclipse image set that makes it so challenging to find and use tools to align them all.

In many cases with astro images, the goal is stacking, i.e., aligning a feature of interest across multiple images where that feature is positioned arbitrarily. In effect, you're "solving" for a single, static variable, and assuming anything that doesn't correlate with it is noise and can be safely eliminated.

/1

malcircuit,
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This is a similar issue with processing comet images; the stars and the comet are moving.

I feel like there is an opportunity for someone to make an tool that can handle this "two-variable" case.

I have no idea what it would look like, and I don't have the time or inclination to create such a thing. Just putting it out into the ether because I thought it was interesting.

/end

malcircuit,
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@thomasfuchs What do you mean by two "plates"? Like, two sets of images: one where you track the stars and one where you track the comet?

malcircuit,
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@thomasfuchs I understand why that's the pragmatic method to capture such images, but it feels redundant.

malcircuit,
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@thomasfuchs Like I said, I understand that's the most efficient and obviously accurate method. I'm contemplating whether there might be a more sophisticated, computationally intensive way to get similar results from a single set of images.

As in, there's a lot of additional information (the star field as a reference, manually entered position of the comet in the image, the comet ephemeris data, etc) that maybe could be leveraged to tease out the comet image? Just idle speculation.

thomasfuchs, to astrophotography
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

Work in progress on everyone's favorite galaxy pair (need to catch more photons as I still have way too much noise in the image).

A longer focal length telescope would be helpful with this, I'm really pushing my smol telescope a bit too far with this target.

malcircuit,
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@thomasfuchs I'm shopping for a new camera and I learned that the ASI294MM Pro has a special "unlocked" Bin1 mode to get higher resolution (8288x5644 vs 4144x2822 in Bin2). That kind of confused me at first because they list a lot of the specs in the Bin2 mode. I was wondering whether the images I've seen from you are in the Bin1 or Bin2 mode?

I became much more interested in the ASI294MM once I learned it has smol 2.3 micron pixels 🤏🏻. I understand now why you get so much detail on your images.

malcircuit,
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@thomasfuchs That's what I figured. It's a good way to compensate for the wide field of the Red Cat 51. That's why I got the ASI178MM that I've been using, which has a similar pixel size.

malcircuit,
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@thomasfuchs Does your ASI294 have any amp glow, or is that not an issue for that model?

malcircuit,
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@thomasfuchs Okay, good to know. My ASI178 also has some obnoxious amp glow, so I know your pain. Like you say though, a good set of darks fixes it. I suspect that's a bit easier with a cooled camera.

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