Astro PM’s analysis suite is four tools that share one goal: know exactly what you captured, keep only what deserves stacking, and understand what your optics are telling you.
The Four Tools #
| Tool | Job |
|---|---|
| Sub Inspector | Batch review: load a whole folder of subs, measure them all, grade with adjustable thresholds, and reject the bad ones safely. |
| Image Analysis | Deep single-image diagnostics: star quality, focus-plane tilt, collimation, vignetting, dust and reflections, PSF profiling, exposure evaluation. |
| Image Annotator | Plate solve any image and overlay astronomical catalogs – identify everything in the frame, annotate, and export. |
| Multi-Image Analysis | In beta: the 3D focus-curve system – load subs across focuser positions to visualize the focus surface. |
How Analysis Closes the Planning Loop #
Rejections in Sub Inspector are recorded against the matching project (files are matched to exposure lines via their FITS headers – filter, exposure time, and folder), so accepted counts drive project progress. The scheduler plans future nights against accepted totals: a night lost to cloud is automatically re-planned, because the ledger says the subs did not survive review.
Supported Files #
All tools read FITS (.fits, .fit, .fts) and XISF; the single-image tools also open TIFF. Metadata comes straight from the headers: filter, exposure, date, gain/offset, binning, temperature, focal length, pixel size, airmass, and plate-solve WCS when present.