December 2005 Version 2 now
available
Key new features in V2.0 ...
 | "Full globe" view to re-project a whole or crescent moon image - see
screenshots below |
| Improved user interface with fully re-sizable picture windows |
| Multiple monitor support |
| Significant speed improvements |
| Supports cut/paste and drag/drop methods for loading images - especially useful for loading images from a web page |
| Output image viewer with support for zoom, rotate & flip image |
| Automatic image format conversion where necessary to 24-bit RGB |
Of all the objects in the night sky the moon shows by far the greatest amount of detail through any telescope or imaging system. Unfortunately though only 59% of it can ever be seen from Earth and a fair portion of that area is only ever seen near to the lunar limb where the shapes and details of the craters are distorted by the oblique viewing angle.
PlanetWarp is designed to get round that problem and re-project or warp your lunar images so that you see the edge features as though you were observing them from above. The program will work equally well for sunspots near the solar limb or planetary features but its primary purpose is for images of the moon.
| For example here is a picture of the crater Bailly which is very near the
Moons' Southern pole and hence is seen at a very oblique angle from the Earth...
|
... and here is the output from PlanetWarp showing the view of Bailly as if you were
directly overhead
|
For further reading about re-mapping techniques refer to the article in Sky & Telescope January 2005 "A New Way of Looking at the Moon" by J.-P. Metsävainio
Planetwarp is distributed as a fully-functional 30-day trial version. After this period you must either purchase a licence or uninstall the software.
A licence costs £15 (GB pounds) and is locked to an individual PC (you will need to quote the Machine ID, as shown in the License dialog box in Plantwarp, when completing your license purchase). However, you may request an additional license key, free of charge, if you wish to run the software on a second machine or whenever you change your PC or operating system. Planetwarp is only licensed for non-commercial use, for any other use please contact the authors.
You license entitles you to all future updates of Planetwarp. Link to licence purchase
1024x768 or greater display resolution
Microsoft .NET framework V1.1 (for more details refer to Microsoft
.NET framework )
Note: PlanetWarp has NOT been tested with .NET framework V2.0, you should
install V1.1 to ensure compatibility.
Planetwarp has been tested on Windows 2000 and Windows XP but should work on
other Windows versions also. Please note however that we are unable to offer any
support for platforms other than those listed above.
The latest version of PlanetWarp can be downloaded here. This page also contains links to purchase a licence.
The following screen shots show some typical processing.
 |
The original image (far left) is loaded into PlanetWarp and the limb of the Moon is defined by clicking on five points. These are shown in red on the second image and the resultant circle fit is shown in green. |
 |
The "orbiter view" tab allows you to see a thumbnail view of any point on the original image as if you were directly overhead. Clicking on the thumbnail produces a full resolution picture in a separate window. |
 |
The "full globe" tab has three sliders allowing the image to be rotated to any desired viewing angle. A full scale image can then be produced in the output picture window. |
If you wish to report a bug or suggest an improvement to the software you may contact the authors at planetwarp@astrospider.com
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