TheSkySearchers

Hi Everybody,

I was reading Mark's post 03/24/24 Sun in CaK viewtopic.php?p=268802#p268802 and he mentioned the software package LuSol3D. It is an amazing piece of software. I even got out my red and blue 3D glasses for the full 3D effect. As Mark said it was great at visualising sunspots coming around the rim of the Sun.

So, I wondered what other Solar software was available and found a suite of applications Helio, Helio Viewer and Helio Creator by Peter Meadows. The applications looked very interesting with great functionality.
I was hoping I could ask a question of anybody who uses this software.

If I use Helio Viewer then on start-up it display a full-disk view of the Sun. If I then load in one of my full-disk images, there does not seem to be a way of viewing the full image. Is that the correct functionality or am I being silly?
The first screenshot is on startup and the next is after loading a full-disk image of the Sun. That is the maximum view I can achieve.

Many thanks for any help.

Pete

From everything I read on the website would indicate it will only work with 'full disk' images. It appears the image you are working with is only a partial image of the sun.
I have never used this software as my solar work is always partial images.

Hi Pete,

Glad you liked that LuSol3D; it was actually Gordon who informed me about that. Too bad it wasn't a little more complete; there is no way to save the 3D image other than a screen capture. And nice to hear I wasn't the only one who tried it with the 3D glasses too! A very neat effect. For H/A, it has a few features that I'm looking forward to trying soon.

I had never downloaded the Helios set of software, but you got me curious... You're right, it seems to be a nice piece of software; I'll have to play with this; thank you for the heads up

I got the same result you did; just a partial disk. I found that before you load your file you can set an image size with the Disk Diameter menu, and here's where I think the problem lies: There is no way to resize the window it displays in. Be nice if it was seperate and scalable, but it would seem that's not an option.

My pics, when finally Photoshopped, aligned and what not are copied (Magic Wand) and I put them on a black 3000 X 3000 pixel frame. When I opened today's stack with Helio Viewer it looks like yours:



Not exactly of course, we have different scopes but you get the idea. I had to scale it down to 33% (1024 X 1024) to fit the full disk in the window:



Nope; it's not you, I think it's just the nature of the program

Glad you're having fun it would seem, hope it continues for you!

All the best,

Gordon wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 6:41 pm From everything I read on the website would indicate it will only work with 'full disk' images. It appears the image you are working with is only a partial image of the sun.
I have never used this software as my solar work is always partial images.

Hi Gordon,

Sorry, I should have explained my image was a full dusk image. The software only shows part of it, which was the problem.

Mark, has the work-around to scale the image (1024x1024). I wonder if the author had that resolution camera?

Anyway, the Helio tools look really good. Lots of great functions.

Many thanks.

Pete

Hi Mark,

The Helio tools look very interesting. Thank you for sanity checking me I thought I was missing something obvious. Great call to resize the image.

I will resize and explore the tools.

Many thanks.

Pete

For anyone wondering around looking for the software referenced above...
https://www.petermeadows.com/indexsolar.html
A word of warning though, these programs do not play well on 4k monitors. As others have mentioned, having to scale down your image size is really bad. But the programs themselves do not properly resize and much of the info is unreadable on my screens. Too bad, it looks really nice otherwise.

AstroBee wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2024 1:03 am For anyone wondering around looking for the software referenced above...
https://www.petermeadows.com/indexsolar.html
A word of warning though, these programs do not play well on 4k monitors. As others have mentioned, having to scale down your image size is really bad. But the programs themselves do not properly resize and much of the info is unreadable on my screens. Too bad, it looks really nice otherwise.

Hi Greg,

In the end I had to reduce solar images to 567 x 567px to fit the full-disk in the application. I took the original 4128 x 2808px image, flipped it vertically and rotated it -51.8 degrees (parallactic angle of 28.4 + Earth's obliquity 23.4 degrees?) and resized it to 567px. I believe this gives the image the correct orientation to the Sun's rotational axis. It seems to match with spaceweather.com, though I might be blissfully happy in my ignorance

Greg, you're right that some of the text is hard to see on a 4k monitor. I moved it to my HD monitor to improve the view. Maybe, this application is more to do with solar projection and sketching. It was fun to explore though.

Have fun.

Pete

I tried a bit ago myself but then thinking I could in the end place a compass gif on one of my images to show what proper solar orientation should be,

I have seen others doing this and it has been required and acceptable for scientific group solar studies of late as well.

Some reasons being there is no current up to date viable large format replacement or alternative and image mapping applications are in widespread use by the elites so its only in the least helpful to have an indication noted.

All that and I still havent added the extra step to at least one of my images when posting

Maybe I'll get back on that...

You're right, Pete. He does mention on his page that he is a sketcher, not an imager. So it probably works fantastic for his use case.
I do have a 1920x1200 monitor so I'll give it a try on that monitor next chance I get.