Unistellar eVscope - More Experiences (V. 1.3)

Introduction | The New App Version (Version 1.3.0) | The New Image Format and the New Image Processing | Small Bug List | Suggestions for Improvement | First Conclusions on Version 1.3 | Links || Appendix: Report on App Version 1.3 for Unistellar

Introduction

Photos: My eVscope (End of January 2020)

Read First, Please!

My eVscope arrived at my home at the end of January 2020. During the first weeks, it had an app with a version number below 1.0. My experiences with this early app version are reported on page Unistellar eVscope - First Experiences. For links to further experiences, see page Overview of the eVscope Pages.

Note: Those who already start with a newer app version do not need to read the above-mentioned pages.

The following experiences are based on the app version 1.3 and refer initially only to changes compared with the previous state; there was no update for this version.

On the one hand, according to Unistellar, some bugs were fixed, on the other hand, some changes were made regarding the functionality and the user interface. The following additions are perhaps the most important ones:

The "most exciting comets" of 2021 were added to the app's data base
Four times larger observing record for even more stunning memories of your stargazing; what this mean in practice, I will try to explore below and on page Old Versus New Image Processing (since V. 1.3).

A complete list of improvements can be found in the following. For a more detailed version history, see page App Version History.

The New App Version (Version 1.3.0)

The new app version (V 1.3.0) is available in Europe since May 21, 2021, and I downloaded it on the very same day. First of all, the app required me, as did the two previous versions, to update my eVscope, which succeeded right away. The new app version offers, according to the App Store, the following new functions (in my own words):

The "most exciting comets" of 2021 were added to the app's data base
Four times larger observing record for even more stunning memories of your stargazing.
The files are now scales up to 2560 x 1920 pixels and, instead of 1.2 MB, now have 4.8 MB. Since the sensor size is still 1280 x 960, the result of this upscaling seems questionable, since it does not introduce any new information. I will try to explore this matter further down!
The app is now fully compatible with the new eVscope eQuinox (lacks the eyepiece).
Unistellar experience improvements. Now, we have a "Unistellar experience" instead of an "observing experience"; probably, both mean the same...
Various bug fixes

Unistellar published a short video about the new app version:

Welcome to 1.3 Unistellar app: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke7mIpw6QIs

Status: No updates to version 1.3.

Comets of 2021 Added to the Data Base

The comet hunters among us will be happy about this! I have not checked this, but trust there fully on Unistellar...

Four Times Larger Observing Record

According to a video about the new app version, the photos are now scaled up to four times the original size (from 1.2 to 4.8 MB). I first thought that what already looked blurry in full size on my computer or iPad before, would now look even blurrier, because the camera does not get more pixels this way... I will explore this matter further down! and in more detail on page Old Versus New Image Processing (since V. 1.3).

Note: On July 17, 2021, I noticed that upscaling only occurs in Enhanced Vision mode. Lunar and planetary images in Live View mode remain unchanged at 1280 x 960 pixels (rectangular format without overlay).

Unistellar Experience Improvements

Regarding this aspect, I was not able up to now to find out what this refers to...

Various Bug Fixes

As always, no information on this...

The New Image Format and the New Image Processing

See also my Report on App Version 1.3 for Unistellar from the beginning of September 2021!

So what does the statement "Four times larger observing record for even more stunning memories of your stargazing" mean in practice? To be honest, this was not easy for me to clarify. As already written, just upscaling the sensor images does not add any new information, and the eVscope's photos, which appear blurry at full size anyway, become even blurrier this way.

So much for the theory! But before I pass judgment, I first wanted to look at the new results and compare them with the earlier ones. Besides, I am not interested in the new size, so I compare the old results with the new ones after scaling the new ones back down to 1280 x 960 pixels. Then the photos are the same size again and thus directly comparable.

Since the topic "new image processing" became too extensive for this page, I moved the topic to an extra page Old Versus New Image Processing (since V. 1.3), particularly because I also take a look at further aspects there. This is a short summary of my results from that page:

The new photos are initially very grainy, which gets less with longer exposure times (EV times, to be precise...), but ultimately always remains stronger than in the old photos.
On closer inspection, the new photos appear less "painted" to me than the old ones. These may be nuances, and not everyone seems to recognize this, but to me this effect is evident. Thus, Unistellar would have met my desire to "paint" less when processing the images.
Colors, contrast, background seem to have changed (modified, more saturated colors, stronger contrast, blacker background).
"The bottom line" is that the new photos seem to look a "tiny bit" better than the old ones, with the "graininess" of the new photos speaking somewhat to the disadvantage of the new image processing.

All in all, the new image processing actually brings advantages in the presentation of the sky objects, such as more details and sharpness as well as a darker background. Increased contrast and saturation, however, are a matter of taste and an ambivalent one as well. Now, I only wish that the graininess of the photos and the amplifier glow can be reduced...

App Version 1.3 on the iPad

Initially, the Unistellar app only ran on iPhones (which is why I had to buy one, unfortunately...) and not on the iPad; since app version 1.0.5, it can also run on the iPad. However, I have to admit that I always found the eVscope images on the iPad very blurry and therefore preferred my iPhone for its sharper (and smaller) image. When I used my iPad to control the eVscope for the first time after a long break in late October 2021, the image no longer seemed that blurry to me, which I expected to be an effect of upscaling the image size. Of course, I do not have a comparison between the app versions anymore, so I can only describe my impression here....

So I thought! But I still have eVscope photos in Apple's Photos app stored, taken with different app versions! For comparison purposes, I created an album to where I moved some new and old photos from DSO. And when comparing the photos, there is a clear difference between version 1.3 photos and older versions! The old photos are scaled up in the iPad, which can also be seen, and look "coarser" than the new ones, which are probably even scaled down slightly. With this comparison, it is then also immediately noticeable that the new photos are less "brushed". However, the effect seems to be less due to the scaling than to the image processing alone. I scaled down photos in the new format to the old size and transferred them to the iPad. There was virtually no difference between these and the large-format images on the iPad.

The lesson I take from this is that a comparison is not always easy, and the results often depend very much on the conditions and sizes under which the comparison is made. The new format may only realize its full potential when the photos are displayed larger than the original 1280 x 960 pixel format. On the other hand, the downscaling example shows that the differences between old and new photos are essentially due to differences in image processing.

Small Bug List

I postpone my bug list to version 1.4, which also is said to have fixed a lot of bugs...

Suggestions for Improvement

Wish for Unistellar: Error message as to why the Enhanced Vision mode was aborted.

Possible causes could be:

The general quality of the frames is not sufficient (this can also be seen by the fact that the EV time does not increase), and it was aborted after a number of discarded frames.
Clouds (also a quality problem...)
Shocks or other disturbances

And as always, I wish that important image data would be saved with the image!

First Conclusions on Version 1.3

App version 1.3 has brought some useful improvements, particularly for the look of the photos. Once again, a "thank you" to Unistellar for that! But the company also did not implement a number of features that I had hoped for and had asked Unistellar for several times already.

See also my Report on App Version 1.3 for Unistellar from the beginning of September 2021!

Note: I draw generals conclusion about the eVscope after owning it a little more than a year of ownership, based on app version 1.2, on page Unistellar eVscope - Second Conclusions (Version 1.2).

Appendix: Report on App Version 1.3 for Unistellar

Finally, I would like to give some feedback on app version 1.3. It was already released at the end of May, 2021, but somehow I never managed to put my feedback together. And it is still not "final", after all...

I would like to restrain myself to giving feedback on the new image size and processing. When I first read the statement "Four times larger observing record for even more stunning memories of your stargazing", I was not quite sure what this means. But I soon found out that it means upscaling the images from the sensor size of 1280 x 960 to a "whopping" 2560 x 1920 (2 x in linear size).

My first thought was that this is not a good idea, since upscaling does not deliver any new information and makes the image softer, overall. This is similar to the digital zooms of digital cameras (they come in various "spices"...), and typically you should not go beyond a factor of 1.4x there.

A second finding was that the new images are rather grainy, which is new. The graininess is reduced over the observing time, but does never really disappear. It is rather evident if you brighten up the photos for demonstration purposes, and may nearly become invisible if the sky on the photo is dark. I do not know the cause for the graininess. Upscaling be one reason, a changed image processing the other - probably a mixture of both...

But as always, things are not that easy! I found the following changes:

The colors seem to have changed somewhat (for example, M 27 turned to more bluish than the greenish before - I do not know which is more correct...). And they also seem to be more saturated (this is also visible at bright stars, which are much more "colorful" at the edges now).
The contrast seems to be higher, making for darker skies and maybe more brilliant looking photos on the one hand. On the other hand, the bright cores of some globular star clusters are even more washed out than before (and harder to recover...).
The images show more detail (they look less "painted") and appear much sharper on my iPad now. I will discuss both items below.

iPad: I rarely used my iPad for controlling the eVscope, because I found the images, similar to my laptop, fuzzy and somewhat disappointing, whereas they looked much nicer on my iPhones, because they were a lot smaller on these.

Recently, I used my iPad again (because it has more "stamina"...) and was pleasantly surprised by the sharpness of the photos shown on the screen!

I no longer have access to older app versions, but in the Photos app, I still had some photos taken with older app versions of objects that I also had recently photographed. Well, that really is a difference and a huge improvement, which I had not expected!

I considered that upscaling for the old versions and downscaling for the new versions might cause the difference. But that is not the case! I transferred some downscaled photos (1280x960) taken with the new app version to my iPad, and they looked nearly identical to the large versions. So, it is the new image processing that makes the images look sharper. So, this was an interesting experience!

More Detail: I always disliked the "painted" look of the eVscope images, that is, the processing "brushed away" the details. This was especially apparent on photos of large nebulae, such as M 42, M 16, or M 17. This is also apparent, when I compare eVscope photos with my photos taken with the ASI224, which uses the same sensor (albeit in a different mode...). On a first brief look, the images now seem to look more similar, but I still have to check that thoroughly...

I had always planned to send you an e-mail and ask for less painting. This has never happened, but you seem to have guessed my wish - the new image processing "paints" definitely less and reveals more detail. Not every eVscope user may recognize this, but for me, it is evident. I found this already for M 16 and M 17 (and some more nebulae...), but will have to wait until winter for M 42...

So, this is also a nice surprise for me, which comes somewhat unexpected because of my preconception regarding the upscaling of images. Anyway, I scale my images down and back to 1280 x 960 for archiving purposes (and presenting them on my Website)...

So all I would wish is that the graininess of the photos (and the amp glow) can be reduced...

Wish List

Finally, I would like to return to my wish list, which is rather short this time.

First of all, I have to repeat my request for some sort of storage of the image data, be it EXIF data (preferred), an addition to the file name or some text file. The data may be stored in the data that go to SETI, but I do not have access to the SETI server (and would have to store the data there first, which would cause delays...).

Secondly, I would like to have an error message that explains why the Enhanced Vision mode has aborted. There may be many reasons for this (clouds, too many discarded frames, shocks, etc.). I had an e-mail exchange with another eVscope user who complained about lots of EV mode aborts and was unsure how he could improve on this...

So that's it for today! If you need images examples, please let me know! But I think that the Unistellar engineers know the photos that the eVscope produces well and do not need sample images...