Hi Bill,

I would be quite fascinated to have a mosaicking program with the projection
adaptability of Guide.

I have used an automosaic program that is built into the programs of Bev
Ewen-Smith for Starlight Xpress camera's. It also starts from the RA, dec
coordinates which are first determined by a search procedure where the
inputs are a GUIDE star list and your picture.

You might know COAA's URL and e-mail, but here they are anyhow:

coaa@...
http://www.ip.pt/coaa

The problem with Bev's software is that it works only on certain sizes
linked to the SX sizes, but that difficulty might be solved when you get
together.

The advantage is that it delivers bitmaps of unlimited size, so the
resolution problem is already solved.

One problem I encountered while using the automosaic program is that on the
edge of the field there were double stars because I tried to mosaic
rectangles of several degrees size and there was different deformation from
one corner to the other....well, how do I say this, flattened sky maps do
not fit on a globe, you know? Anyhow, I think Bev's program uses rectangular
projection and the sky is only close to rectangular projection near the
equator.

Here you might have an advantage with GUIDE projection possibilities.

It would be even better if one could use wide-angle full-35 mm frame
pictures and find out the best projection for them, is that built into
charon? Some German photographer whose name I will have to find does
tremendous work in large scale mosaics and has provisions for that in his
programs.

Awaiting the suggested improvement impatiently,

Siebren & Renée Klein
s.s.klein@...
http://www.geocities.com/siebren2001/index.html

:
: Matt, I'll have to ponder that "auto-mosaic" function. Now that you
: mention it, I'm a little surprised that there isn't anything out there
: that does such a thing. Maybe there is, and we've just not heard of it?
:
: It _may_ not be all that tricky, since it fits into some things I've
: contemplated doing anyway within Guide, to have it compose an image in
: the background. By so doing, I could increase the speed and allow for
: auto-color-mosaicing (you take three images in three colors, Charon-ize
: them, and Guide shows a resulting full-color image, with the three
: images lined up nicely with each other.)
:
: -- Bill