Lövell is an application for Electronically-Assisted Visual Astronomy.
It is built on the LÖVE 2D platform, using Lua as a scripting language running under LuaJit.
Lövell owes its existence to the amazing application Jocular, by @MartinCooke, and, to some extent, its successor, Canisp. The main display looks a bit like Canisp, the DSO and observations catalogues are lifted almost directly from Jocular (translated from Python to Lua.)
The novel thing about Lövell is that the image processing workflow is performed almost entirely within the GPU using code written in Open GL Shader Language. This makes it fast... most post-stack operations are performed within one video frame update (typically 1/60 second) so all interactive adjustments intensity / colour / filtering happen almost instantly.
- download the appropriate (Mac or PC) image of LÖVE (https://love2d.org/#download)
- install it, per the relevant instructions
- download the Lövell.love file from this repository
- click on the Lövell.love file (or drop onto the LÖVE app) to run it
- drop a folder containing raw 16-bit FITS files onto the app window
The main display shows a stacked image with controls for adjustments and an information panel.
- clicking on the LRGB... button cycles through Mono / Red / Green / Blue and back
- clicking on the Asinh... button cycles through Hyper / Linear / Log / Gamma / ...
- right-clicking on either of the above shows drop down menu of the same options
- mouse wheel / trackpad scroll zooms the display
- click and drag moves the display
- click on Eyepiece.. to switch to Landscape.. display, and vice versa
- hover over eyepiece ring to activate image rotation, click and drag to change
- enter object name in field on top right to search DSO catalogue
Some 40,000 objects of interest. Close button returns to main display.
- click on column names to sort
- text or numeric expressions in filter boxes to select subsets
- click, shift-click, option/control-click to (de)select multiple items
- right click on image to show pop-up menu of DSO / Observations / Watch list / View stack
- scroll control to forward time by up to 24 hours, updating object positions in Az, Alt, etc...
View all the subs in sequence, show detected and matched stars. Close button returns to main display.
- mouse wheel / trackpad to scroll through subs
- Play button animates sequence of subs
- rate control changes speed
- Blink toggles between adjacent subs
- Show stars indicates detected stars (in blue) and those matched for alignment (orange)
- Martin Cooke, of course, for Jocular and Canisp.
- Matthias Richter for the impeccably written libraries SUIT and Moonshine
- Malvar-He-Cutler Bayer demosaic McGuire and Rasmus25
- Fast Global Registration Qian-Yi Zhou, Jaesik Park & Vladlen Koltun
- GPS Antenna icon by Icons8
- LÖVE 2D
- Lua
- LuaJit