Found it! It’s a Windows/VMware problem! I was saving the output TIF file on
the “Shared Folder” that’s shared with the Mac host. Once I changed the output
directory to C:\ something, I got some output. The first output thru me for a
moment. It was just the average of the JPEG files. The result is a really
light, uniform grey field with a few, barely noticeable “dust spots” on it. But
the histogram display showed it wasn’t blank. So tweaked it to more closely
resemble a night sky. Has a definite brighter purple region in the center. Some
kind of hot spot.
So reran using the CR2 RAW lights and darks, still with “Average” stacking.
This time it came out with a dark background, looking like the night sky. Still
has a slight brighter circle in the center. You have to look closely to see it.
Well, until I try enhancing the image anyway. I’m sure I can emphasize it
without trying! :-)
Now to add a bigger virtual disk so I can try the Kappa-Sigma methods, improve
my polar alignment technique, and find someplace close by that doesn’t
completely wash out everything, ...
Thanks everyone for your suggestions and for listening to me talk to myself!
Michael McDonald
mikemac@xxxxxxxxxxx
On Jun 17, 2016, at 12:00 PM, Michael McDonald <mikemac@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I’m running Windows XP in a VMware Fusion virtual machine. If the codecs
aren’t loaded, how is DSS displaying the previews of the individual frames?
And that wouldn’t explain why using the JPEG images gives the same empty TIF
file as the output.
What’s really funny is it takes 7 seconds for DSS to write that 8 byte TIF
file!
Michael McDonald
mikemac@xxxxxxxxxxx
On Jun 17, 2016, at 11:48 AM, Rob Biggs <rbiggs79@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If you are running Deep Sky Stacker in Wine or some other Windows Emulator,
you will need to make sure the emulated windows environment has the CR2
codecs. It would actually be simpler to use a VM container like VirtualBox
if you are not familiar with Wine configs. That your Mac can open it does
not really mean the Windows end can, and you might be facing that
disconnect.
On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 11:37 AM, Michael McDonald <mikemac@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
When I click on the individual light frames, they do get displayed and I
can see some number of stars. When I zoom in using Preview on the Mac, I
can see a bunch more of the fainter ones. I probably should find some
viewer that is more explicit about the CR2 format, just to make sure
nothing funny is happening like displaying an embedded JPEG preview image
instead of the RAW data.
When using the CR2 files, I drop the threshold down to 3% and turn on
median filtering (I hope that’s the right name). That gets the start count
up 50-60 range when I use all of the light images.
When I use the JPEG files instead, I think it found 138 stars at 10% and
no median filtering. But it later complained I couldn’t use dark frames
because of JPEG compression. So I went back to trying the RAW files instead.
Of the 40 light frames, they’re actually two batches of 20 frames each.
One batch taken at 10s and the other at 20s. I wouldn’t be surprised if the
20s frames are adding more noise than helping with the signal. (These
images are taken from by backyard in Chandler so there’s a LOT of light
pollution. 30s exposures are way over exposed.) The tracking doesn’t look
too bad: dx and dy range from 0 to +/-40 pixels with the angle less than
+/-0.03 degrees.
If I use just the 10s light frames, DSS finds 78 stars at the default 10%
and no filtering. I can try tweaking those settings to try and get the
start count closer to 100 if you think that will work.
Michael McDonald
mikemac@xxxxxxxxxxx
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