Swansea Astronomical Society Blog: Lunar imaging with AstroDMx Capture for FreeBSD and AstroDMx Capture for Windows

Nicola has been working hard to make AstroDMx Capture work from a single code base, and currently has it working on four platforms:

The original Linux
MacOS
Windows
FreeBSD

We report here lunar test imaging with FrreBSD and Windows

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a Unix-like, posix compliant operating system that has many similarities with MacOS and Linux. It is one of the most secure operating systems in existence and has its main use in Website platforms and servers. It has been around since 1992 and in addition to application in the cloud, it is also a very secure desktop operating system. Like other UNIX variants, it can run a whole gamut of desktop environments, so it as easy to use as Linux.

However, from the point of view of an astro-imager, FreeBSD has no SDKs written for it by camera manufacturers, so choice of cameras to use is very limited.

Nicola decided to implement the Imaging Source DMK/DFK/DBK series of cameras, which are UVC devices at heart, in addition to USB tether supported Canon and Nikon DSLRs The ability to use these cameras, in particular DSLRs, makes FreeBSD a viable imaging platform. People who routinely run FreeBSD will now be able to run AstroDMx Capture for FreeBSD, at least after it has been released.

AstroDMx Capture for FreeBSD was used with a DMK 21AU04.AS camera, with a Skymax 127 maksutov mounted on a Celestron AVX mount.

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for FreeBSD capturing Lunar data

After stacking with Autostakkert! and wavelet processing in Registax, both running in Wine and post-processing in the Gimp 2.10, a final image was produced from the 54.1% waxing Moon.

Final Image