Software Review  - AIP4WIN Astronomical Image Processing for Windows

…….by Doug Christianson

Except for basic planetary images with digital cameras, all astronomy digital imaging requires image processing.  Obtaining a publishable image, even in Prime Focus, of a deep sky object is something of a combination of matrix mathematics and artistic manipulation.  Sorting through the software needed to turn digital deep sky images into final products is also something of a mystery.  Before trying AIP for Windows I had tried several products related to my Cookbook 245 camera, plus demo and trial versions of IRIS written for the French Audine camera, AstroArt, and MaximDL.  All have strengths and weaknesses and all continued the mystery of consistently making the most out of a deep sky image.

Then FWAS members, Ron Dilulio and Doug Carroll, convinced me to order AIP4WIN.  This program is actually a part of the real product, the book by Richard Berry and James Burnell entitled "The Handbook of Astronomical Image Processing.  It is the book that makes AIP4WIN stand out from the rest.

For anyone except a real long term expert at digital image processing of deep sky images, AIP4WIN is the answer.  Not only does this product explain everything about digital image processing, it does it simultaneously at the levels of the mathematics and software routines behind the operations AND in the strictly amateur level of showing us what to do with lots of examples. 

I started using AIP for Windows by going directly to the tutorials for image processing.  These tutorials explain the process from the very first operation to the most complicated astrometry and spectrometry functions.  Naturally I was anxious to turn fuzzy

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AIP4WIN Book and CD

AIP4WIN Screen Capture