OK, I not only eat crow, I will cook it up and serve it to others....Rick is right--you *have to have* this software. After seeing what it could do on some real images, I had a friend run a frame of M45 I had through the software, and I was stunned with the results. So I put my money where my mouth is and bought a copy today. Got it via email in less than 20 minutes. Less than 30 minutes later I had a very nice shot of M45 from what had been VERY messy data--HUGE spikes. Attached is the cleaned up shot, and here's a link that shows one frame to show how big the spikes were. The software is fast--it took less than a minute to clean up all the spikes on 22 images (about 34MB of data), and works well--I simply used the default settings.
http://www.ntsllc.com/ccdastro/Messier/M45-BR.html
This image was flawed by a loose lens in my FSQ that elongated the stars in the upper right and caused some diffraction spikes, but otherwise I am tickled. M45 is *not* supposed to be a CCD target, but I would put this up against virtually any film shot, and I don't even consider this a best effort.
Jeff Hapeman
http://www.ntsllc.com/ccdastro/Messier/M45-BR.html
This image was flawed by a loose lens in my FSQ that elongated the stars in the upper right and caused some diffraction spikes, but otherwise I am tickled. M45 is *not* supposed to be a CCD target, but I would put this up against virtually any film shot, and I don't even consider this a best effort.
Jeff Hapeman
Attached Image:
Jeff 8O
