MaxIm DL aka Mah Boi Maxy

Hello kiddies! You’re old buddy ROBEA is back! Last time we had a great time talking about the amazing little Robot InSight! But this time we are back on the Orion Nebula train! Don’t groan! You love the Orion Nebula! We’ve been through so much together! I feel like there is nothing left to be said about the Orion Nebula. It’s the Crazy Baby Makin’ Machine, what more could you want? That’s why this time I’m going to focus on another part of imaging this bad boy. In the past we’ve talked about the special camera, the fancy non-rideable wolf mount, and the fancy smancy not-snapchat filters. Wow, ok we have talked about way more things than I thought we did. This time we are going to talk about the MaxIm DL program. Oo! I love throwing sciencey words at you guys! I’m going to throw some more at you! Hmm let’s see here Arachibutyrophobia (the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth), Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia ( the fear of the number 666), and pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (a lung disease and the current longest word in english). Are we all baffled, perhaps flummoxed or maybe even bamboozled? Good! Now let me do you some more learnin’! MaxIm DL is a program that is meant to be used to process images taken with a fancy CCD camera (D 2009). From now on I am going to be calling MaxIm DL Maxy because I am lazy and it’s faster to type. Anyways Maxy is a pretty cool program because it can do many things. But the most important thing it does is calibrate images (D 2009). Don’t get too excited, our boy Maxy doesn’t do it for you. You have to sit down and find the appropriate images to smash together until you get what you want.

Retrieved from: http://www.sierraskies.org/observatory/index.html?MaximDL1.html
(This is what Maxy looks like when you open a file in its program! Yeah I know it does look kinda confusing....)

For example a normal calibrated image is made of four things, Bias’ (a picture that was taken with no exposure time, basically this bad boy is a blank photo), Darks, Flats (Photos of the sky at twilight, how romantic!) and your data images (the thing you want to calibrate). And these four things are basically shoved into a blender and then squeezed into one image. All of that is one function of Maxy. Maxy can also tell you info on the photo itself (D 2009). Listen Maxy tells you so much information about your photo that I don’t even understand half of it but a few things I know for sure it tells you is the date of when the photo was taken, the temperature of the camera, and the exposure time of the image (D 2009). I wish I could tell you more about Maxy but to be honest it's a very complex program. I think of it as Photoshop for us space nerds. The amount of info Maxy can tell you is crazy, whoever made the program obviously put their heart and soul into it. Also another thing Maxy and Photoshop have in common is mugging its customers of their money. To use Maxy you have to get a license agreement and that will only last you for a certain amount of days so if you want to keep using it you have to give more money to the man. Honestly Astrophotography is really cool but it is freaking expensive. Don’t even get me started on the price of a CCD camera (Over $4,000 dollars if you’re wondering). But I will say that Maxy is somewhat worth the price? If you are an astrophotographer then you can’t live without Maxy but if you’re a casual like me then the $200 dollar price tag is quite daunting. Ok I am gonna stop rambling like a crazy old lady now. You are free to go! Toodaloo everyone!!!

Works Cited

D. (2009, November 1). Cyanogen Imaging ® MaxIm DL. Retrieved December 11, 2018, from https://diffractionlimited.com/help/maximdl/MaxIm-DL.htm