Happy Friday Folks,

I've been working for some time on a new feature for Ekos called the Aberration Inspector. Its purpose is to identify back focus error and sensor tilt. There are other pieces of software that do similar things so credit to folks at ASTAP and Nina for their ideas. Although I haven't used the other software packages I have watched Youtube videos of people using them to get more of an understanding of this area.

Here's an introductory video of the Aberration Inspector .

I'm bug fixing it at the moment so its not available in the standard Kstars / Ekos release yet. Neither is it available in the nightly builds.

If anyone is interested in trying it in beta mode please let me know. You'll need to be able to build from source and be able to take a merge request. I would particularly be interested in partnering with someone with a back focus / tilt correction device like PhotonCage. I don't have one of these myself so am a bit limited in how far I can take this development without outside help.

Clear skies!

Just had a quick view on your video and this great new feature. Thank you

One comment: in the field were the Petzval surface and the sensor plane is shown, would it be possible to integrate the CFZ so the sensor would be perhabs like a transparent box (the sensor still being the plane)? Dont know if this is possible, but may help to decide if adjusting is necessary or not?

Thanks for the feedback Juergen, I'll have a think about it.

When adjusting you can display the CFZ on the v-curves. Its centred on the central tile solution. So you can see where the other tiles are solving in relation to the CFZ.

Is it in some branch? I would love to test it out.

Hi Nou,

Great!

The MR is here:
invent.kde.org/education/kstars/-/merge_requests/995

It uses QtDataVisualization libraries that are not currently mandatory for Kstars/Ekos (this is currently being looked at). I think you'll get these on a default Qt installation so you'll probably not need to do anything except recompile, but if you get compile errors it could be because you don't have QtDataVisualization installed.

Thank you John. Great piece of work.

Just a suggestion.... I find that the view presented in Siril (and ASTAP) of the tiles more easy to visualise (siril.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Image-inspection.html). Perhaps one to consider for the next iteration :-)

Hi AstroMuni,

Thanks for the feedback. The fitsviwer already displays this view if you select Mosaic Mask...



Hopefully that's what you are after?

Thanks. I wasnt aware of this. I was referring to the way in which tilt is shown. (image taken from ASTAP)

Instead of the HFR in the corners you could show the focus positions??

Thx, will have a think about that.

I quite like the contour maps PixInsight gives for FWHM and Eccentricity...

Can't wait to see this implemented, it is a fantastic tool to add to image quality.

Not only that, your video and the 3D representation of back focus and tilt is excellent in it's own right. Newcomers to the hobby will intuitively be able to understand the effects of sensor positioning.

Ooh yeah.... the PI views on eccentricity would be great. Your 3d views are a great way to depict it too, btw.
Onwards and upwards John

+1 for the PI view !