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Image Autoguiding

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Hi.

I subscribe to The Astro Imaging Channel that does a broadcast each week on imaging topics. A recent one that i thought was very interesting and something I had not seen or heard of before, was a presentation on Image Autoguiding by Robert Majewski. Its apparent that this approach has many advantages, and in many ways improves guiding accuracy and simlicity. The presenter was looking for a development partner as he has developed this on Mac and was looking to Windows as a next step.

I felt that this may well be of interest to the developers of EKOS/Indi as I am not a dev.

The Youtube presentation is here and Robert does give a contact email during the talk.
SW Equinox 80ED, ZWO 120mm, Pegasus FocusCube, EQMod (EQ5 Pro)
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jasem Mutlaq
Last edit: 6 years 11 months ago by Clive Davies.
6 years 11 months ago #15508

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Replied by Jasem Mutlaq on topic Image Autoguiding

Thank you, that was interesting, but the question is: is it open source? If it is, then incorporating this into Ekos is a possibility.
6 years 11 months ago #15510

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Replied by Paweł on topic Image Autoguiding

The issue of license is important only if you would like to adapt the app for e.g. KDE.
The idea could be used without any input from the author since this is simple math
(FFT phase shift used instead of centroid tracking). It would actually be easier to insert
this as an alternative step into EKOS guiding module replacing centroid calculation.
The math is public and the idea is published now so any issues with potential patents
are non-existent. We can (and probably should) contact the author - but we can implement
the idea without his input (but should credit him with the idea). He is an OSX user so I would
not expect him to be too excited about free software...
Last edit: 6 years 11 months ago by Paweł.
6 years 11 months ago #15515

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Replied by Paweł on topic Image Autoguiding

Shell we contact the author about his intentions?
6 years 11 months ago #15516

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Replied by Clive Davies on topic Image Autoguiding

I feel my job is done here in that my intention was to get the users involved that could take this idea forward. If you have watched the full video you will have seen that it is possible to track using a indoor surface. It is this that made me feel this approach to guiding should be investigated. I do hope this is implemented as it would result in many cases only requiring one camera to both guide and take images.
I will monitor with interest.
SW Equinox 80ED, ZWO 120mm, Pegasus FocusCube, EQMod (EQ5 Pro)
6 years 11 months ago #15519

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Replied by Andrew on topic Image Autoguiding

I watched this presentation earlier last week, Very interesting stuff. If I recall they mention a few times that they would be happy to share this for further development, and I think the host might have mentioned Jasem, and Kstars INDI directly.
6 years 11 months ago #15525

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Replied by Paweł on topic Image Autoguiding

I may be able to help with signal processing part - I have some experience in this area. Jasem is, obviously, the best person to talk about ekos. I would hope for the positive attitude of the author (judging from few sentences in the presentation) but I would not take it for granted. People are often seduced by the illusory possibility of commercialisation of ideas. I've seen it multiple times.
6 years 11 months ago #15526

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Replied by Jasem Mutlaq on topic Image Autoguiding


Yes please go ahead and let's see how it goes from there.
6 years 11 months ago #15528

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Replied by pauledd on topic Image Autoguiding

What I do not understand is that 15 seconds exposure mentioned in the video. If I remember correctly he said he broke the exposures into 15s subexposures and sum them in ram for the final exposure for
the image autoguiding with the main camera. Then another person in the video asked for that 15 seconds because astroimaging would normaly use exposures 1 to 15 minutes and he said you could also use the guiding scope to do the image autoguiding and use the main camera for longer exposures. That was the point where I was wondering because at the beginning of his presentation he claimed the errors that are introduced by those other methods to guide (fov, differential flexure,jitter) and then he recommends one of those to have longer exposures on the main camera. Maybe I missunderstood something :oops:
--= human, without Windows™ =--
pls excuse my bad english! :)
6 years 11 months ago #15541

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Replied by Paweł on topic Image Autoguiding

It has two modes. The traditional guide scope mode and zero drift mode using short exposure stacking as a imaging technique. His goal is to keep the star on the same photocell. Otherwise this technique is pointless - you can just align and stack the images without any guiding but you will loose the calibration accuracy.
6 years 11 months ago #15548

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Replied by Paweł on topic Image Autoguiding

The original author responded and agreed to cooperate with us in implementing his idea in ekos. Furthermore, I got few attachments, with detailed theory of operation paper and code samples. After short review it seems the implementation should be quite straightforward. Unfortunately, I have no experience with EKOS and QT programming. I can implement the image processing part. I will try to have a prototype proof-of-concept implementation soon.

Jasem, would it be possible for you to implement just a skeletal generic guide module with gui and just empty functions for the xy_shift(ref_im, cur_im) implementation?
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jasem Mutlaq, Vincent Groenewold, Magnus Larsson
6 years 11 months ago #15580

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Replied by Jasem Mutlaq on topic Image Autoguiding

Pawel, I will setup something soon that can be used for testing for this. Will create a branch in KStars and email you the details.
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6 years 11 months ago #15584

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