MaximDL Utilities
John Winfield ’s MaximDL
Plugins
I have been using MaximDL since early 2005, and starting in early 2006 I have been investigating using VB to create utilities and plugins to perform helpful tasks related to image acquisition or image processing.
Below is the list of currently available utilities.
Seeing Monitor: 
This DIMM seeing
monitor provides an easy way to quantitatively measure the atmospheric
seeing at a location, using a simple Hartmann mask.
SkySolve:
SkySolve
is an application which performs All Sky plate solutions.
It can locate the precise location of an image on the sky with no
initial hint at to its location.
Pinpoint Guider Calibration plugin:
This plugin allows fast and accurate guider calibration by using a Pinpoint solved guider image.
Pinpoint Guider Calibration plugin
Advanced one-shot
colour conversion (DeBayer) plugins:
These alternative algorithms for converting RAW images to colour should produce finer results.
Bilinear Interpolation Debayer plugin
Smooth Hue Transition Debayer plugin
Here is a simple FITs file I used to evaluate the various debayer algorithms (zoom right in to see the effects):
Multi-star guiding
plugin:
Uses the average error from multiple stars to guide on, allowing the use of fainter stars.
Drizzle
sub-exposure stacking plugin:
An algorithm for stacking dithered sub-exposures to gain a higher resolution output image.
NB. This is in beta at the moment – there are some outstanding issues related to alignment in some cases.
Manual guider
calibration plugin:
Allows the operator to manually select the guide star position during guider calibration.
Manual Guider calibration plugin
DSS image blink
comparator plugin:
Automatically downloads a reference image from DSS and performs a blink comparison with the specified user image.
Sky background
magnitude measurement plugin:
Calculates the sky background brightness based on a reference star of known magnitude.
Sky magnitude measurement plugin
Guider settling
script:
Ensures the guider error drops below specified threshold between exposures.
Sky Flats Assistant
plugin: 
Creates a series of sky flats while automatically compensating for the darkening sky.
Meteor Scan plugin:
This plugin for MaximDL takes a continual series of sky images and automatically scans them looking for meteor trails.
Maxpoint
Observation addition plugin:
This plugin for MaximDL allows additional observations to be added to your Maxpoint model using plate solved images.
Add Maxpoint
Observation plugin
LRGB in the H.S.L.
color space plugins:
This plugin for MaximDL allows LRGB images to be constructed in the H.S.L color space resulting in true color retention.
NB. This has been integrated into MaximDL's color combine function from version 4.58 onwards.
Fat-tail Deconvolution plugin: (courtesy of Robert
Vanderbei)
This plugin for MaximDL performs Fat-tail Lucy-Richardson Deconvolution on the selected image.
Undistortion plugin:
This plugin for MaximDL uses the Pinpoint distortion map to remove distortion from an image.
CopyStack Script:
This script simplifies gathering images shot over multiple nights into a single directory for processing and stacking in MaximDL.
SmartTrack MaxPoint addon:
This application uses the MaxPoint mount pointing model to enhance unguided image tracking.