Maxim DL

Anybody use this?
I'm considering buying it.
It seems to be the full package.
I'm tired of flittering from one free
medicore prog to the next.

I gather that it is an excellent product - but I have no personal experience.
I tend to favour cost free solutions.

I've read a paper that compares it with IRAF (the tool of choice for professional American astronomers) for photometric work and concludes its as good as and is fit for professional use but is particularly well suited to serious amateur use.

Another competitor to IRAF is ESO MIDAS. I've read a paper which compares IRAF with MIDAS and comes out generally in favour of MIDAS (particularly for ease of installation and for user modification).

It depends on what you wish to do and the confidence that you wish to have that the package does what it claims to do (if your are doing science then one might lean to the tools that the professionals use). One trend that I notice is the growth of the use of the Python language. pyfits (beautiful), and the general growth of Python in use with astronomical tools

- its the new language of choice in astronomy (as far as I can tell) for new projects (there will always be legacy fortran).

Both IRAF and MIDAS are serious packages intended for professional use - both are freely available but don't have the "point and click" convenience that I feel most amateurs feel comfortable with. They also only work in UNIX/Linux environments.
So Maxim DL comes up really high for amateur use - if you are happy with the financial outlay.

Maxim DL is an integrated package that allows for camera control, for example. IRAF and MIDAS don't do that.

There is another free - amateur - package worthy of note and that is IRIS.
This is a keyboard driven package (as far as I know not much point and click). I have this installed but never used it apart from looking through some of its help topics - but appears very good - and very broad in application.



Also - don't rule out purchasing "The Handbook of Astronomical Image Processing" Richard Berry and James Burnell. An excellent book - and the S/W package bundled with it is really quite powerful. This is a source of education that is worth the money just for the education.

I wouldn't rule out the free option - but Maxim DL appears to be a very respected and amateur friendly package.

If there is interest in the packages that I refer to I can post follow up depending on the query.

Now for planetary and lunar work - I don't see an alternative for Registax for amateurs. Maybe Maxim does that - I really couldn't comment.

Mark C.

(Guys, I really miss the preview option before making a post - can that be fixed?)

Hi Frank,

I use Maxim all the time in the observatory and it's great. The most important word I used there is in the observatory because it defeats the purpose of having maxim in the first place if you have to set up your equipment each night.

Maxim is designed to do multiple things it takes control of all your telescope equipment ie - telescope/guiding/ccd/automatic focusers/ automatic filter wheels and dome all by pressing the connect button.

It's also used for image capture lights/dark's/flats image processing like calculating your RGB weight factors. Analyzing photometry and astrometry
great software and is used in observatory's all over the world.

The important question is what will you be using it for..

Carl.

mjc wrote: One trend that I notice is the growth of the use of the Python language. pyfits (beautiful), and the general growth of Python in use with astronomical tools

- its the new language of choice in astronomy (as far as I can tell) for new projects (there will always be legacy fortran).

Hope I'm not taking this too off-topic but I just wanted to say cheers for linking this. I'm a bit of a python coder so this will be most interesting to look in to.