Hi, a new member here, after a long time enjoying the website I thought it is time to jump in too.
Regarding the Meade Autostar Suite program, does anybody know if it has the capability to provide stellar magnitude estimates when used in conjunction with the Meade DSI camera?
Thanks,
Graeme
To be honest, I'm not sure. I don't think that it would however, Meade could have chucked it in. I never used the software anyway much beyond Envisage when I first started imaging, and always have been a Starry Night user. Most people seem to use something else as well.
It looks like it does! My version would not load the photometry section but I actually don't have any Meade cameras and had no image up. It looks like a simple photometry routine with centroids and such or at least thats what the help file shows. Pretty slick for a free program. It doesn't look like it will do long time series well and it might be a bit tedious if you had to do lots of stars with this tool. Still it looks as if you can do some measuring and at least get started doing science.
Thanks for the replies, a collegue and I have carrying out a program of double star measurements for about four years now using the Washington Double Star Catalogue. On quite a number of occasions we are finding the listed magnifications of either component stars seems incorrect or even not listed. We have been using just the Basic Meade DSI version 1 with good results, and if the Autostar Suite program has the ability to provide magnitude estimates we can include this data as well. We are not necessarily looking for measurements down to two decimal places, but an estimate within say half a magnitude would be a big help in updating the accuracy of the WDSC records.
