[Aavso-photometry] Aavso-photometry Digest, Vol 45, Issue 6

[Jim Roe]

bailyhill at aol.com wrote:
> Could you mention some of the windows programs that you have used
> successfully?? How about Mira, Maxim, Tfocus, Allos, Temma2, Canopus,
> AP4WIN?? I think these are some of the ones that AAVSOers would be
> using.?
> 

While you (or someone else?) is at it, would you tell me which, if any,
program is capable of listing every detectable star in an image with its
RA, Dec, instrumental magnitude, (plus all the other goodies in the
header such as date, time, filter, exposure, etc).

The closest I've come is AIP4Win that will list most of these but only
against PixelX and PixelY coordinates - unless you use their primitive,
human input required, plate solution.  (CF, Pinpoint or Charon which are
automatic and nearly instantaneous.)  I suppose I could use the plate
solutions by either Charon or Pinpoint LE (in Maxim) to transform the
Pixel coordinates, but that seems clumsy.

Charon does a nice job but requires one to pick off the stars in the
image individually.  The good news is, I've asked Bill Gray to see if he
would fix this and he said he would look at it - keep your fingers crossed.

It looks to me that Maxim is only good for time series (in the
photometry front, that is - I like it a lot for other functions).  Am I
missing something?

BTW, I've been able to run WinXP in a virtual machine from a Linux host
using VMware Player.  V.2 supports USB 2.0 and the only big problem I've
encountered is using the host serial port - but that is easily fixed by
using USB-Serial adapters ($10 each).

Jim Roe
Wentzville, Missouri