SurveyOverlay for PixInsight
Welcome to SurveyOverlay
SurveyOverlay fetches a professional sky survey for the exact field of our image and creates a new image with the same dimensions and the same geometry as ours: star for star and pixel for pixel, the survey image lines up with our data, ready to be compared with it. Our image itself is not changed.
The sky has been mapped many times over in light our cameras do not record, and to depths a single night does not reach. The Planck and IRAS dust maps show galactic cirrus no matter how faint it is in visible light. The H-alpha surveys trace ionized hydrogen across the whole sky. GALEX shows the ultraviolet, WISE and 2MASS the infrared, and the DSS, Pan-STARRS and the DESI Legacy Surveys give a deep optical view of almost any field. With one of them registered to our image, questions that usually take guesswork become a matter of looking: is that faint smudge real nebulosity, or is it a gradient? Where is the background truly empty? What does this object look like in the infrared?
SurveyOverlay needs just two things: an image with an astrometric solution, and an Internet connection. It reads where the image points, connects to the Strasbourg astronomical Data Center servers for that piece of the survey we chose, and reprojects it through our image’s own solution, distortion corrections included. Our image is never modified: the survey always arrives as a new image.
Thirty-one surveys are built in, ten of them in color, and any other image survey published in the HiPS network can be fetched by typing its identifier.
Our image (1) and the same field as a dust survey shows it (2), delivered by SurveyOverlay as a new image of the same size, orientation and astrometric solution. The faint structure in our background is in the survey too: it is real.
100% free
SurveyOverlay is free and fully functional for personal use. There is no trial period and nothing expires: every feature is available to everyone, forever.
The free version shows a small advertisement banner at the bottom of the interface, promoting other Deep Sky Colors tools for PixInsight. The banner is a single clickable image; it never interrupts our work and it makes no attempt to track us, not even if we click on the banner. Registering SurveyOverlay removes the banner.
Installing it, in three steps
Every PixInsight process made by Deep Sky Colors is installed through DSC Hub (DSC = Deep Sky Colors), our free PixInsight process. One address gets you the hub, and the hub gets you the rest.
1. Add this repository to PixInsight:
Where do I add it?
- Open PixInsight and go to RESOURCES > Updates > Manage Update Repositories.
- Click Add, and enter the address above exactly.
- Click OK to save it, then OK again to close the window.
2. Go to RESOURCES > Updates > Check for Updates. DSC Hub appears already selected, so click Apply and restart when PixInsight asks.
3. Open PROCESS > DeepSkyColors > DSCHub. You are now looking at every process we make, with its version, what it does and what changed in its latest release. Select SurveyOverlay, click Download and install, and restart. It appears under PROCESS > DeepSkyColors.
DSC Hub is free, it installs only what you select, and it leaves the rest of your PixInsight setup alone.
Prefer to add one repository per process? SurveyOverlay still has its own: https://repo.deepskycolors.com/SurveyOverlay/
We can also do the opposite, and have SurveyOverlay automatically place our image over a survey of choice with a larger FOV. This adds context to our images.
Register your copy, use it forever
SurveyOverlay is free to use for personal use. Individuals can still register their copy, which will remove the ad banner. If you wish to use SurveyOverlay for commercial, business, or organizational purposes, please contact us to discuss appropriate licensing options.You can install and use your registered copy of SurveyOverlay on any machine you also have PixInsight installed, regardless of operating system (your registration is valid for any and all offered platforms) or number of installations, and you can use it for as long as you want (lifetime license). Just click on the "Buy SurveyOverlay" button. You'll be redirected to PayPal.
NOTE: After you make your purchase, you should receive an email from us, usually within 15 minutes. If, after 30 minutes (but not before that) you still haven't received our message, please check your spam folder. If still nothing, contact us.
SurveyOverlay Full Documentation
SurveyOverlay's full documentation is accessible from within SurveyOverlay itself - we just need to click on the Documentation button in SurveyOverlay. We have also made the same documentation available online, here:
Credits
SurveyOverlay was developed using the PixInsight Class Library. Any product derived from the PCL, including SurveyOverlay, must reproduce the following acknowledgment:
This product is based on software from the PixInsight project, developed by Pleiades Astrophoto and its contributors (http://pixinsight.com/).
The above statement refers to our use of the PCL to develop SurveyOverlay only. SurveyOverlay is developed independently, without any relation to or specific contributions from Pleiades Astrophoto.