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AstroCounter v1.1.2 - Portable

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@ghostkronos ghostkronos released this 18 Oct 11:17
· 18 commits to main since this release
v.1.1.2
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AstroCounter v1.1.2

AstroCounter v1.1.2 delivers major improvements to photometric star detection accuracy, astronomical plate solving, in-frame catalog scanning, and seamless two-way Stellarium synchronization, alongside bilingual support and zero-dependency portable deployment.

Highlights & Key Improvements

1. Robust Photometric Star Extraction & Noise Modeling

  • Asymmetric Background Noise Estimator: Replaced full-window standard deviation with an uncontaminated sub-median and interquartile range (IQR: $1.4826 \times (P_{50} - P_{25})$) estimator across a 2D spatial mesh. Bright and saturated stellar cores ($netPeak \ge 235$) no longer artificially inflate local sky noise.
  • Calibrated SNR & Bright Star Confidence: Tier 1 High confidence ($\ge 80%$, Green) is now strictly guaranteed for saturated and high-SNR stars ($SNR \ge 10\sigma$ or $netPeak \ge 90$) using an integrated metric:
    $$\text{Confidence} = \text{clamp}\left(0.80 + 0.10 \times \text{SNR}{\text{score}} + 0.10 \times \text{Peak}{\text{score}}, 0.80, 1.0\right)$$
  • Sub-Pixel Flux-Weighted Centroiding: Added adaptive flux-weighted centroid refinement for saturated cores, centering bounding boxes precisely on true stellar centers.
  • False Galaxy Classification Elimination: Saturated stars with prominent Point Spread Functions (PSFs) are no longer misclassified as diffuse galaxies.
  • ONNX/YOLO Core Calibration: Added brightness-based confidence calibration for ONNX inference to prevent deep learning detectors from downranking saturated star centers.

2. Blind Geometric Plate Solving & In-Frame Deep-Sky Catalog

  • Integral-Image Star Extraction: Rapidly isolates star centroids while subtracting nebulosity gradients and irregular panorama boundaries.
  • RANSAC Triangle Invariant Matching: Performs scale- and rotation-invariant triangle matching against an embedded J2000 celestial catalog to calculate exact gnomonic tangent-plane World Coordinate System (WCS) parameters (RA, Dec, pixel scale, field rotation).
  • Targeted In-Frame Filtering: Replaced the legacy manual fetch button with an automated in-frame catalog filter. Once plate solving succeeds, the catalog dropdown is dynamically populated exclusively with celestial objects (Messier, NGC, IC) physically located inside the photograph's field of view.
  • Clean Coordinate Tracking: Eliminated UI text overlap when target objects fall outside the frame; only verified in-frame objects are selectable.

3. Real-Time 1:1 Stellarium Bidirectional Sync

  • Automated Windowed Launcher: AstroCounter launches Stellarium automatically in windowed mode (-f no) with HTTP Remote Control enabled on port 8090 without permanently modifying local configuration files.
  • Bidirectional Viewport Locking: Panning or zooming inside AstroCounter instantly moves Stellarium, and panning/zooming in Stellarium synchronizes AstroCounter's viewport, scale, and spherical rotation in real time.
  • Equatorial Grid Projection: Renders curved Right Ascension and Declination grid lines onto the image canvas with a continuous $0^\circ\text{--}360^\circ$ orientation slider.

4. Radiometric Normalization & Scientific Formats

  • Midtone Transfer Function (MTF) Auto-Exposure: Automatically enhances severely underexposed linear stacks without blowing out stellar highlights.
  • Bilinear Sky-Glow Pedestal Subtraction: Automatically neutralizes light pollution pedestals.
  • Scientific Format Support: Native decoding for 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit floating-point TIFF stacks (striped and tiled) alongside PNG, JPEG, and BMP.

5. User Interface & Internationalization

  • Bilingual Interface: English is enabled as the default language, with automatic system language detection (Turkish / English) and a dedicated one-click language toggle on the header bar.
  • Streamlined Workflow: Legacy buttons and non-functional controls have been removed in favor of a clean, unified toolbar.

Verification & Test Suite

  • All 37 automated unit tests passed (AstroCounter.Tests targeting .NET 10.0), including synthetic bright vs. faint star photometric calibration tests and WCS transformation verifications.

Assets

  • AstroCounter-v1.1.2-Portable.zip (Self-contained Windows x64 executable; no .NET, Python, or CUDA installation required).
Assets 3
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