Charon/e-mails/Mars map
Bill J Gray Jun 5, 2003
David, I'll make my standard offer with Charon: you may want to
e-mail me an example image, with details such as the focal length,
CCD camera identity, and target name. Given that, I can generally
get the settings rapidly and e-mail them back to you.
The main problem with Charon is almost always getting the initial
setup done. Once you're past that, subsequent images are trivial.
But it can take a little while to puzzle out the "inverted vs uninverted
image" (you have to try both, since there is no standard convention
here!), scale tolerance (especially with Cassegrain scopes), and
so on... it's usually less frustrating to just send me an example or two.
Pat, the change to a moderated group appears to have caused
most of the spammers to go elsewhere. Your swap of addresses
certainly will cause no trouble, except that your first post may be
delayed slightly until I mark you as an "unmoderated" member.
Not a big deal... I was worried that the switch would result in
greatly increased management; that has definitely not been the case.
Kilroyj, sorry, I don't have a decent solution to getting one's own
images in as "replacement maps" for Mars and other planets. I
wrote a somewhat balky, user-abusive program for that purpose
(and didn't go to the effort of making it "user-friendly" because I
expected to use it only rarely... so far, that's been true.) It converts
GIFs to the .QWE format used in Guide; this format adds some
Guide-specific data, plus allowing the image to be stored at
assorted resolutions (a sampled version for wide-angle views,
the full image for detailed views, and some in between, as
needed.) It's not a program I'd want to inflict on anyone else!
-- Bill