Astro Art 5: What do think of it?

[Star Hunter]

What do others think of this program? Difficult? Hard, Not so bad, Easy?

Have you connected a telescope to it and did AA do what it supposed to do?

How would you compare AA5 to Nebulosity?

Just wanting to know which way I should go with one of them and why?

cheers,

JaBar

[jase]

I believe Louie (atalas) and Mike (strongmanmike) use it to good effect. I used it a long time ago so don't feel qualified to answer your questions. I'm sure others will chime in.

[Merlin66]

I've been using AstroArt since V3.
No issues, no problems.
It controls all my cameras DSLR, ATik16, ATik 324L, QHY etc.
I use it for aquisition and pre-processing of all my spectroscope work.
Never needed to try other software - AA5 just works so well for me.

[sil]

My copy is gathering dust. I found the manual unhelpful and the application too confusing. This seems to be the case with a lot of astrophotography apps though so its probably more a personal choice of what you find works for you. I mainly use PixInsight (its not perfect either), but am starting out in spectroscopy and thinking a revisit of AA might be in order (PI seems useless for spec work).

[Merlin66]

Sil,
If you let me know your issues with AA5 I may be able to help...

[sil]

I've been doing photography and 3D modelling for over 20yrs, so when it comes to any sort of imaging apps I pick them up very fast. However astrophotography really doesn't follow any conventions used anywhere else. So its just the workflow methodology that all these apps take that's the problem.

They each have their own ways of doing things and many seem to expect you are taking images a particular way (eg one app may only handle movie files but not still as input or vice versa; or expecting LRGB data or won't handle DSLR images because the dimensions are too large, etc). So for me Astro Art just wasn't working for me and my data. PixInsight has a steep learning curve and lacks a lot of documentation, support can be very unhelpful if you ask particular questions (such as how to make my stars rounder: answer is always shut up and buy better equipment).

I've also got the regular freebie apps and StarTools (paid). For me there is no such thing as a single do-everything app. I currently don't have any guiding for me CGEM DX so my use of these tools is for processing captured data into photographs. I find for some data some tools will do one part of my processing workflow better than others so I jump between them to get the best I can from my data, with my current level of processing knowledge.

So basically AA isn't necessarily a bad program and in answered the OPs question of "What do others think of this program? Difficult? Hard, Not so bad, Easy?" Plenty of people are able to work it really well for great results but I'm not one of them. Really the best advice I can give is try it out and see how it suits you.

[Merlin66]

Sil,
AA5 will do camera control (and filterwheel) for any/ all the CCD cameras and DSLR's.
It will allow you to stack and process any image from the above.
For video/AVI files I find Registax5 (or 6) does the basic quality sort and stacking...you can then move the final file into AA5 for further processing.
AA5 should be able to guide your mount...
For GOTO etc then CdC control (via the handcontroller) is the way to go..

[JohnH]

I used AA4 and now use AA5 - it is an excellent app -and works for both acquisition and processing - in the latter area it makes LRGB processing easy. It is capable of autofocus, autoguiding (running multiple cameras or SBig dual chip ccds including AO units) and plate solving as well and supports ASCOM fully. It is also scriptable - so you can fully automate your imaging sequence. In short is it a very powerful package almost a one stop shop though you will probably need and image processing tool as well for making cosmetic adjustments.

I have only used Nebulosity briefly - my recall is it is a far more limited package - simple to use -and more suitable for beginners.