Archive for the ‘space’ Category

Image/Frame Stacking

Thursday, January 10th, 2013

Image-Stacking: motion-compensated superimposing (eg by averageing) of objects in a set or sequence of images

I’ve traditionally used RegiStax, currently at version 6.  It works, but I wonder if there are any alternatives, since:

  • It is a little clunky and crashy.
  • It only seems (unless I’ve missed something) to do plain averaging, not more robust (to noise and blurring) such as median or motion-estimated deconvolution etc.
  • It works on the basis of tracking-points, not textures (as does Mocha). Textures are more robust.

I’ll give AstroStack a try.

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The Mars Underground (2011)

Saturday, August 25th, 2012

As a child I watched in awe the live Apollo moon-missions.  No single thing gave me more admiration for the USA than this, and I was not alone.  Desolate decades followed, of introverted application of far greater sums of money and amounts of energy on transient and unimpressive efforts, on earth and in low earth orbit, the potential just evaporating into nothingness.  Cynicism and opportunism of the new age questioned even that the moon missions had ever happened.  Not that hard to appreciate, given that nothing in space on such a brave and imaginative human scale had happened since.  Great robots and probes, but…

The practical possibility of exploratory missions to Mars was demonstrated decades ago.  Yet nothing happened.  The obstacle: neither technical nor financial, just establishment politics, inertia, entrenchment, fear.  Now, with the success of the “unlikely” technology of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) (“Curiosity”) landing, something has re-awoken.

It is time to recognise, remember and reiterate the potential.  Hopefully I’m contributing at least a tiny element to that spirit here, in my lowly video-technology blog.

This is the hope: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDWvsdEYSqg

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