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Amateur astronomers using MaxIm DL have discovered literally hundreds of supernovas, comets, and asteroids. For example, the Puckett Observatory Supernova Search program has more than 140 supernova discoveries to its credit, virtually all of which were discovered by team members visually inspecting and comparing images using MaxIm DL. Bill Yeung has discovered over 1,700 asteroids using MaxIm DL/CCD to control his four CCD cameras. Amateur astronomer Michael Oates has discovered a total of 142 sun-grazing comets in SOHO images downloaded from the web. MaxIm DL has been used to process the images for over 100 of these discoveries. Backyard CCD astronomers using MaxIm DL make similar discoveries almost daily.

This latest version 4.5 has a new memory management system that allows images to be loaded beyond the ~2GB application memory capacity of Windows XP. It’s perfect for modern high megapixel cameras. It also has new high-accuracy Planetary and Astrometric (PinPoint) alignment modes. There are new Sigma Clip and Standard Deviation Mask combine modes. A new Command Sequence window allows you to record image processing steps as you perform them.

This new version allows you to automatically or manually generate calibration groups. Simply pick a directory full of calibration images; automatic generation uses FITS keywords added by camera control to assemble the groups by CCD temperature, image size, filter used, and frame type. Best frame sets are automatically picked when you calibrate an image, based on flat-field filter slot, temperature, frame size, etc. Includes automatic scaling, flat-darks, Sigma Clip and Standard Deviation Masking, improved pedestal handling, and automatic subframe extraction. An updated Calibration Wizard simplifies setting up calibration manually.

Other new features include bloom removal that lets you automatically or manually remove the effects of blooming on images taken with cameras without anti-blooming. The program adds a small amount of noise to the replaced bloomed areas, either automatically or user-determined on a per-bloom basis, for more natural-looking images. You also now get Lucy-Richardson deconvolution to let you deconvolve color images. And there are many other new features.

Minimum computer system requirements . . .

• Computer: a Pentium or equivalent or higher PC is recommended; 32MB RAM minimum (256MB recommended for large images); 20MB of disk space is required for software installation. A 100MB swap file is recommended for optimal image processing.

• Operating system: Windows 98, 98SE, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, or higher. Windows 2000 or XP is strongly recommended. Windows 95 and a MacOS/SoftWindows combination are also usable, but are unsupported configurations.

• Display: 800 x 600 video minimum, 1024 x 7868 recommended; 16-bit color or higher is required (8-bit minimum for monochrome imaging).

• Other requirements: A mouse is required. Internet Explorer 4 or higher required to use the online help function.

Software features . . .

• Easy to use: MaxIm DL supports any image size to the limit of your computer’s memory. Wizards simplify complex image processing functions. You can pan and zoom images in multiple windows. Thumbnail images in the Windows XP-style image processing dialog boxes give you a quick preview of results. A convenient toolbar includes the most commonly-used features. There is a full context-sensitive help function on line, in addition to a detailed 250-page manual with index.

• Image stretching and scaling: You can perform contrast/brightness adjustments using the mouse. Changes to the “screen stretch" do not affect the contents of your image file. There are automatic stretch settings. You can use gamma, logarithmic, or linear stretching; uniform, straight-line, exponential, lognormal, Gaussian, and Rayleigh curves; plus a user defined curve that lets you paint your own curve with the mouse. There’s also a user-defined transfer function that lets you perform an arbitrary non-linear stretch, and more.

• Advanced image filtering: The program provides multiple selectable FFT and kernal filters, using automatic parameter calculation or custom mouse-based parameter selection. You can develop up to 12 user-defined kernels. There’s an unsharp mask function, and much more.

• Lucy-Richardson or MaxImum Entropy Deconvolution: These are sophisticated image processing programs that will tighten up blurry images to reduce the effects of atmospheric seeing, telescope aberrations, and guiding errors. They can save so-so images from your computer’s recycle bin. You can deconvolve the whole image or just a portion. Automatic Wizards make them easy to use.

• Color image support: You can combine three or four filtered CCD images in RGB, LRGB, CMY, or LCMY formats. You can do a manual alignment with sub-pixel shifting, an auto-centroid for precise alignment, and rotational alignment. You can let the program do an automatic alignment using star matching and correlation matching. You can do a color balance adjust, adjust the saturation, do color smoothing, and more.

• CCD Image Calibration: A calibration wizard makes CCD calibration a breeze! The program supports bias, dark, and flat field frames. There’s an auto-scale based on the exposure length from the image file header (FITS, SBIG). Auto-optimize automatically calculates the scaling for minimum noise level. And there’s more.

• Image Stacking: You can take image sequences and save them to disk., then use the Combine feature to add the images together, with precise alignment. This lets you inspect each image and reject any that are trailed due to periodic error in the drive, wind gusts, etc. The alignment tool allows you to leaf through the images and discard bad frames. Sub-pixel image registration is supported, and several different alignment methods are available, ranging from automatic star matching to manual overlay. You can apply a full calibration, including bias, dark and flat, prior to summing the image. If there are any hot pixels you can also clean these up before they propagate through the combined image. You can do a median combine instead of sum combine, which can eliminate cosmic ray hits, hot pixels, etc. You have the original “raw data" and can reprocess the image if desired.

• Image Manipulation: You can flatten the background; build large mosaics from individual images; do individual pixel editing using the mouse; align sets of images using bicubic or linear resampling; do an image resize with interpolation that’s controlled by image dimensions or pixel aspect ratio; remove bad pixels (hot pixels or blooming); add noise; rotate, flip, mirror, and duplicate the image; make pixels square; combine multiple files with manual or automatic shift/rotate to combine a series of short unguided exposures into one long-exposure equivalent image; remove a gradient due to moonlight or light pollution with one click; and much more.

• Image Analysis: Photometry – You can perform accurate photometric measurements, for example to plot light curves of variable stars and eclipsing binaries. Astrometry – the PinPoint astrometric engine is fully integrated, allowing you to perform precise positional analyses for binary star position angle and separation measurements.

• Image Inspection: You can perform blink comparisons and animate solar system motion. You can do a 3-D plot to build a 3-D representation of an image. There’s a night vision mode and a zoom view that shows a close-up of the area under the cursor. There’s a continuous display of cursor coordinates, pixel intensity, and pixel color in status line. An information box displays statistics using a resizable circular cursor. The box includes intensity and red/green/blue display; cursor position and radius; brightness statistics (minimum, maximum, average, and standard deviation); the X and Y centroid; the X and Y full-width half maximum (FWHM); the estimated star magnitude with a calibration feature; statistics on the whole image or a rectangular region; and more.

• Scripting and Integration: There is extensive support for ASCOM compliant scripting for both instrument control and image processing. COM-based image processing plug-ins are supported. This allows the plug-ins to be written in many different languages, including Visual Basic and Visual C++. Open interfaces also allow users to write custom telescope and focuser drivers. MaxIm DL integrates with ACP2 observatory automation software to support automated imaging and browser-based Internet astronomy.

• File formats: MaxIm DL supports many popular file formats:
  • FITS - a full implementation of the standard file format for astronomical images, with selectable pixel format and a proprietary lossless compression feature.

  • SBIG - supports the full line of SBIG cameras.

  • PC-Lynxx CCD cameras.

  • BMP - Windows standard format.

  • TIFF - industry standard format (no LZW compression).

  • JPEG - with controllable quality to allow for optimum compression.

  • PNG - for high-quality compressed images.

  • RAW (unformatted binary) - IEEE float, 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit integers.

  • Starlight Xpress images can be imported using either RAW or FITS format.

• Upgrade policy: MaxIm DL includes one year of free minor version updates via web site download. Major releases are available at upgrade prices (DL to CCD, Version 2 to Version 3, etc.)