Desaturate Stars

When a star finder is applied to an image (whose data are always linear), ellipses are displayed around the stars. When an ellipse is magenta, it means that the star is saturated.

A saturated star is a star whose brightest pixels have no more information and are clipped to the maximum value. In general we try to not to saturate the stars, even if this is not possible for the brightest. If despite the precautions there are still saturated stars, Siril has an algorithm that will reconstruct the profile of the star taking into account the results of the adjustment made during the findstar.

First, you need to perform a star detection, either with the findstar command or the starfinder button of the Dynamic PSF Window. Then, the desaturate tool is found in Star Processing ‣ Desaturate Stars.

Tip

We recommend using a Moffat profile in the Dynamic PSF window to get better parameters.

Warning

It is important to run this tool on linear images, otherwise the stars will not have a Gaussian/Moffat profile and the calculations will be invalid.

dialog

A star detection shows all stars found by Siril. Magenta ellipses are for saturated stars. The image is displayed in autostretch view: data are still linear.

After clicking on the tool, Siril switches to the console and displays the results of the current process:

22:26:17: Star synthesis (desaturating clipped star profiles): processing...
22:26:17: Findstar: processing for channel 0...
22:26:21: Star synthesis: desaturating stars in channel 0...
22:26:21: Star synthesis: 70 stars desaturated
22:26:21: Remapping output to floating point range 0.0 to 1.0
22:26:21: Execution time: 4.09 s

It is necessary to run a star detection again to see the changes.

dialog

After a desaturate processing, no more magenta ellipses are visible. All stars have been reconstructed. The image is displayed in autostretch view: data are still linear.

dialog

Comparison for a star before and after the application of the desaturation tool.

Siril command line

unclipstars
Re-profiles clipped stars of the loaded image to desaturate them, scaling the output so that all pixel values are <= 1.0