Genika Astro is an image acquisition software dedicated to astronomical imaging.
It supports high speed cameras from Andor, AVT, Basler, IDS, PointGrey, QHY, Raptor Photonics, Celestron / The Imaging Source cameras and ZWO ASI
Designed for both professional and enthousiast astronomers, it brings the user a unique set of features that covers all applications of the short exposure imaging :
– High speed image recording for lucky imaging of planets, Moon and Sun
– Star occultation by asteroid with support of low noise EMCCD or sCMOS cameras
– Mutual phenomena between the moons of the giant planets for photometrics analysis
– Any image acquisition that requires a high precision timestamping anywhere in the world
– Automated high resolution solar acquisition when used with Airylab’s Solar Scintillation Monitor
– Image acquisition based upon an external trigger
– Any specific astronomical application with or without a dedicated software development
– Any specific image processing requirement by developping your own DLL called by Genika
Airylab has passed an agreement with Raptor Photonics and therefore Genika Astro support the full camera line, including the NIR Ninox camera.
Genika Astro offers the best performance for direct image-to-disk recording on the market. It can sustains more than 480MB/s throughput for a long period of time, the only limit being the disk capacity and the memory. It uses the advanced double leaky buckets data management of its sister application Genika Trigger to miminize the frame loss. When using the FIFO buffering Genika uses both the memory and the disk at the same time to avoid any frame loss.
Stringent timing requirement is covered either by two solutions. The first one is to use of a GPS resynchronization for a precision better than 10ms. The easier and more flexible solution is to use the optional UTC Timebox that controls the camera shutter directly for a sub millisecond precision unique on the market, even with a laptop anywhere in the world. Both methods are supported in the SER Toolbox.
We can develop custom features or camera support for professional applications, including on the fly image analysis for external appliance control such as a spectrometer or another set of cameras.
Or you can do it yourself by using the external DLL calls from Genika, complete C# examples are provided. The DLL can call any scientific or imaging library such as OpenCV, and work with unmanaged code such as C++.
And last but not least, Genika Astro user interface has been kept simple for a fast operation on the field, even without a training.
Supported camera manufacturers
Genika Astro features
Camera control
– Support for monochrome Andor SDK 3 (Neo/Zyla), Basler (all but camera link), IDS (All), AVT Prosilica (all), Celestron/The Imaging Source, Pointgrey (all), ZWO ASI (USB3) and Raptor Photonics (Camlink with EPIX framgrabber). Supports color Basler, ZWO and TIS/Celestron.
– Any pixel format available on the camera (8/10/11/12/14/16 bits).
– Shutter control from µs to the maximum exposure time supported by the camera.
– Gain, Black, Gamma, EM Gain, white balance…
– Binning 2×2.
– Mouse defined Area of Interest or user defined preset AoI list.
– On the fly dark frame substraction.
– On the fly hot pixels correction.
– Image averaging.
– Shutter commanded by external electrical trigger.
– Save/load camera parameters (Basler/IDS/AVT), auto configuration saving along with an image acquisition.
– Acquisition parameters reminder in the status bar.
Image rendering
– Adjustable zoom from 25 to 200%, free with 5% increments in DirectX mode. Full screen mode. Auto Zoom function.
– Programmable display and histogram refresh.
– On the fly debayer of color images for display. Can be disabled.
– DirectX rendering on GPU.
– Video stream preview, false colors mode with spectrum ramp, negative and log modes.
– Live histogram with Min, Max, Median, and Std Dev and Log mode. Horizontal/verticles levels display on the image from a selectable position.
– Selectable low/high visualization thresholds.
– Selectable analysis AoI (histogram, focusing…).
– Reticule with programmable circle and ticks in pixel or ArcSec.
– Mosaic helper.
– Low CPU utilization, advanced programming (sequential writing, heavy multithreading, double leacky bucket, DirectX rendering…).
Direct to disk
– Detachable acquisition panel.
– SER, GNK, Tangra ADV, TiFF and AVI file format for direct acquisition.
– Direct to disk or FIFO capture modes.
– Auto acquisition mode when used with a Solar Scintillation Monitor.
– SER color RAW format support in 8 and 12 bits modes.
– User defined file Prefix.
– Filter suffix, Flat and Offset file tags.
– File name timestamping, SER timestamping support.
– Txt file associated to each capture with acquisition parameters, ephemeris and seeing data (with SSM).
– Winjupos mid acquisition format in .txt file (hh :mn.d).
– Free run or frame/time limited captures.
– Fully featured repeatable multiline sequencer with focuser and filterwheel automatic control.
– Automatic focus correction at filter change during a sequence.
– On the fly image stabilization by center of gravity.
Files management
– Integrated SER file manager with preview and batch conversion to AVI, Tiff or FITS.
– Batch SER conversion to FITS (single, 3D Cube and multi images) with DATE-OBS.
– SER file timestamp correction to GPS timing (GPS required).
Advanded features
– Fast telescope selection.
– Automatic real F/D detection.
– Autoguiding through ASCOM pulse mode using center of gravity or phase correlation on object surface.
– Planets, Moon and Sun ephemerides without Internet access. Real time Alt/Az display.
– Sampling calculator and sampling advice.
– Telescope alignment assistant.
– PSF analysis tools including entropy, FFTD and FFTI with frequency filtering, and FWHM.
– Customizable filter/barlow/Preset AoI list with embedded editor.
– Focus wizard with micro-contrast and image slopes analysis and visualization and noise analysis.
– Autofocus when an ASCOM absolute focuser is connected.
– Automatic focus adjustment on filter change (requires ASCOM focuser and filterwheel).
– ASCOM filter wheel and focuser control.
– Focuser jog window.
– Detachable acquisition tab.
– Online automatic software updates.
– Complete user manual in English and French.
SDK
– Calls to external DLL for displayed images or all acquired images.
– Two templates provided for the DLL in Visual Studio 2015 C#.
– Possible calls to external unmanaged DLL written un C++ or any other language.
Requirements
– Compatible camera (see matrix)
– Camera supplier .NET SDK installed
– ASCOM plateform for mount, filter wheel and focuser control.
– C2D CPU or better
– Recommanded SSD disk subsystem
– Windows Vista, 7, 8.1 or 10 (32 or 64 bits)
– .NET 4 client
Licensing
Genika Astro standard can support all cameras but Andor and Raptor. The license is bound to your camera(s) (up to 3) so you can use Genika on several PC as long as you use the same camera(s).
