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Nebulosity Software

Affordable, Powerful and Easy to Use Astrophotography Software

	Simple, but powerful interface User friendly capture control Multiple file formats supported including: FITS PNG TIFF JPEG CR2/CRW Camera support (capture - Windows-only unless noted) Highly accurate 96-bit internal calculations Advanced image processing Supports all Opticstar cameras Windows 2000/XP/Vista

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Nebulosity Software

Model / Description	View in Showroom	Order code	Price in USD	Shipping	Dispatched witnin	click button to purchase
Nebulosity v1	yes	STKNEB1	$ 55.00	$ 10.00	24 hours
Neb upgrade to v2	yes	STKNEBU2	$ 25.00	$ 10.00	24 hours
Nebulosity v2	yes	STKNEB2	$ 70.00	$ 10.00	24 hours

Prices are in U.S. dollars and may be subject to local sales tax and/or import duty.
All items are shipped from the United Kingdom.
European Union customers please visit the Opticstar E.U. website.

Nebulosity v1 Manual
(PDF)

Nebulosity v2 Manual
(PDF)

Outline

Nebulosity is designed to be a powerful, but simple to use capture and processing application for a wide range of astronomy CCD cameras. Many cameras are supported for capture (see below) and images from just about anything can be processed (support for many FITS formats, PNG, TIFF, JPEG, CR2/CRW, etc). Its goal is to suit people ranging from the novice imager who wants to create his or her first images to the advanced imager who wants a convenient, flexible capture application for use in the field.

In it, you get a host of purpose-built, powerful tools to make the most out of your images (e.g., Digital Development Processing, traditional alignment/stacking (equatorial and alt-az), Drizzle alignment/stacking, Bad Pixel Mapping, LRGB tools, real-time tricolour histograms for colour balancing, star tightening via edge detection, adaptive scaling of stacks, Canon CR2/CRW RAW Bayer matrix loading, 32/96-bit accuracy, etc.)

Features

Simple, but powerful interface:
- All basic controls are present on the main screen. No need to navigate through lots of menus during an imaging session. Nebulosity was designed to be easily operated in the field by someone who actually operates it in an actual field.
- By default, all displays are auto-scaled. Any scaling (including inverted) of the data onto the display possible using easy sliders.
- Histogram gives a quick view of how much of the valid data range is being used during each capture.
- Pixel statistics / area statistics pop-up window.
- Zoom button lets you rescale the displayed image quickly.
- Versitile Image Preview / Rename tool to quickly sift through large sets of images.
- Measure Distance tool lets you measure the distance (CCD pixels, arc-seconds, or arc-minutes) among up to 3 points.
- Can act as a FITS file viewer for Windows (double-click or drag-and-drop).
- Can write / run scripts to automate captures.
- Unlimited undo/redo (0, 3, or unlimited levels of undo).
- Small clock to show local time, UTC, GMST, local sidereal, Polaris RA, or current CCD temperature.

Capture control:
- All basic capture parameters present on main screen. Duration of exposure, number of exposures per captured series, delay between captures, name of series, camera gain and camera offset all in one simple panel.
- Times may be specified in either seconds or milliseconds.
- Quick Preview button captures one frame with current settings and displays it on the screen without saving. Helps in focus, composition, and tuning of capture parameters.
- Frame and Focus mode: Loops a quick, binned image to assist in rapid initial focus and framing.
- Fine Focus mode: Loops a very quick image around a selected star in full resolution and provides running statistics (and linegraphs of the history of the statistics) to assit in fine-tuning focus.
- Capture one-shot colour in RAW CCD format or reconstruct colour on the fly ñ your choice.
- Automatic setting of camera offset.
- Capture status able to be shown in large red display for easy viewing when away from computer.
- Multiple file formats supported.
- Read virtually any FITS file to process images from virtually any camera (RGB colour, black and white, compressed or uncompressed, any bit depth).
- Captured data saved in FITS as 16-bits (0-65,535) per colour channel, 32-bit floating point per colour channel, or in 15-bits (0-32767) per colour channel.
- One-shot colour data captures may be saved in RAW CCD format or as reconstructed full-colour images in an RGB FITS format (Maxim / AstroArt style or ImagesPlus style) or 3 separate FITS files (the latter only for capture and subsequent use in other programs).
- Captured data saved in either lossless compressed FITS according to the FITS standard or uncompressed FITS.
- These same save formats available for any loaded image, making Nebulosity serve to convert between many FITS formats (just select your output format using the settings on the Preferences menu).
- Save current displayed image in BMP or JPG format (24-bit colour) as displayed.
- Save current image in 16 bit/colour (48-bit colour) uncompressed TIFF, compressed TIFF, or PNG (compressed) format.
- Load Canon CR2 format RAW (Rebel XT, 20, 20Da, 5D, etc) and Canon CRW format RAW as pure Bayer-matrix RAW data.
- Load 8/24 bit PNG, TIFF, JPG, and BMP (scaled to 16/48-bit) or 16/48-bit PNG and TIFF.
- Batch convert from FITS to 16/48-bit PNG or compressed TIFF.
- Batch convert from CR2, CRW, PNG, TIFF, JPG, and BMP to FITS.

Camera support (capture - Windows-only unless noted):
- Opticstar DS-335 series, DS-142 series, DS-145 series, PL-130 series, AG-130 series.
- Atik 16/16IC/16HR series / Artemis cameras.
- Canon DIGIC II DSLRs (Windows and OS X): EOS 1D/1Ds Mk II/Mk IIN, 1Ds Mk II, 20D/20Da, 350D / Rebel XT, 5D, 30D, 400D / Rebel XTi). Captures are to FITS files with pure Bayer-matrix data extracted on the fly (or ultra-fast colour JPEGs - your choice). Bulb-mode exposures via ShoeString DSUSB adapter, serial port adapters, or parallel port adapters.
- CCD Labs Q8-HR.
- Fishcamp Starfish (Windows and OS X).
- Meade DSI, DSI Pro, DSI II, and DSI II Pro (Windows and OS X).
- Orion StarShoot Deep-Space colour Imager.
- SAC10.
- SAC7 / SC1 long-exposure modified webcams / Atik 1&2 – all via the either a parallel port or via the ShoeString LXUSB adapter for all-USB (no parallel port) long-exposure imaging.
- SBIG (Windows and OS X).
- Starlight Xpress SXV / SXVF USB cameras (Windows and OS X).
- Simulated camera (Windows and OS X).
- Virtually any camera supported for image processing - above supported for capture as well.

Internal calculations:
- All data stored internally in 32-bit floating point per colour channel. For B&W or RAW images, this equates to 32-bits and for colour images, this equates to 96-bits in all math routines. You will never have overflow (saturation) or overflow or quantization issues as a result.
- Critical math routines computed in double-precision (64-bit per channel) floating point.
- Since all captures even from one-shot colour cameras can be done in B&W mode (RAW CCD data) and since memory for colour images is only allocated when viewing in colour, memory requirements can be reduced by capturing one-shot colour data in RAW format for machines with less RAM.
- All calculations done using pointer arithmetic for high-speed operation.

Image processing:
- Dark / flat / and bias frame pre-processing of B&W, RAW one-shot colour, and RGB one-shot colour sets of images.
- Auto-scaling of dark frames to compensate for differences in exposure time or temperature.
- Create and apply Bad Pixel Maps as an alternative way of removing hot pixels.
- Versatile Levels / Power Stretch tool lets you apply not only simple linear stretching of your images, but non-linear stretches as well. Pre- and post- stretch histograms interactively displayed and an ROI preview is available.
- Digital Development Processing (DDP). A technique to make CCD images look more like film images by using a hyperbolic scaling of the data. Here, the basic technique is enhanced to allow easy darkening of the background at the same time.
- Star Tightening. A technique to sharpen stars using an edge-detection algorithm (does not leave the artifacts found in ìunsharp maskî techniques).
- Grade a series of images to determine the sharpest / best of the set.
- Normalize a set of images to remove global offset and intensity scaling differences.
- Line filter reconstruction for one-shot cameras. Optimized reconstruction of RAW images taken using line filters. General mode plus modes optimized for H-alpha and O-III/H-beta on CMYG arrays.
- Align and stack a series of images using translation (for equatorially mounted telescopes) or translation + rotation (alt-az or equatorial) or translation + rotation + scaling. Unequal image sizes supported and output either the stack or the individual aligned frames.
- Drizzle alignment / stacking and resolution enhancement for either equatorial or alt-az (translation + rotation).
- colours in Motion: Simultaneous over-sampling alignment/stacking and De-Bayer of one-shot colour images to significantly decrease colour error and increase resolution. For one-shot colour imagers, this improves resolution and reduces colour error.
- Adaptive scaling of combined data (stacks) to use full 16-bit range (gives you the best features of adding and averaging frames).
- Average a series of images without alignment (e.g., for combining darks, flats, bias frames, etc).
- Standard-deviation based stacking of aligned frames to reduce noise in final stack.
- LRGB colour synthesis (RGB, traditional LRGB, and colour-ratio LRGB).
- Line filter reconstruction for one-shot cameras. Optimized reconstruction of RAW images taken using line filters. General mode plus modes optimized for H-alpha and O-III/H-beta on CMYG arrays.
- Adaptive scaling of combined data (stacks) to use full 16-bit range (gives you the best features of adding and averaging frames).
- Tools to set the minimum of an image to zero (useful if a computation has taken it above 65,535 and you wish to save the image) and to rescale the intensity of an image (multiply each pixel by a constant.)
- colour balance adjust (offset and scaling) with real-time 3-colour histograms for easy, accurate balancing. Luminance extraction provided as well.
- De-mosaic a RAW one-shot colour image for any of the supported cameras. Both interactive and batch-mode supported.
- Automatic demosaic of Canon CR2 files with control over white balance for stock and IR-filter modified cameras.
- Manual De-mosaic of RAW one-shot colour images from RGB or CMYG cameras. Full control over pixel aspect ratio and over colour balancing / mixing during conversion.
- 2x2 binning of images: addition, averaging, adaptive, and low-noise 2x2 for one-shot colour sensors.
- Blurring of images (3-levels).
- 2x2 mean and 3x3 median filters.
- Vertical smoothing tool (variable).
- Crop tool.
- Rotation and mirroring of images.
- Resampling / resizing of images using a choice of 6 algorithms: Box, Bilinear, B-Spline, Bicubic (Mitchell & Netravali), Catmull-Rom spline, and Lanczos sinc.
- Pixel squaring.

Notice

We are constantly checking the accuracy of the technical data. We are prepared to provide more detailed information on request. Technical data is subject to change without notice.

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European Union Customers

Customers from European Union member states can purchase any of the products listed here from our dedicated E.U. website.

International Dealers

North America

posted: 8th October 2009

Complete list of dealers.

Opticstar News

Showroom Opening Hours

updated: 4th August 2010

Day    Opening Hours

Monday    9am - 5pm
Tuesday   9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday  9am - 5pm
Friday    9am - 5pm
Saturday 10am - 2pm
Sunday    CLOSED

We are closed on Sundays and public holidays.