Re: image disappearing in single aperture mode

Posted by wvinton on Aug 17, 2014; 9:55pm
URL: http://astroimagej.170.s1.nabble.com/image-disappearing-in-single-aperture-mode-tp172p174.html

I think I might have found the source of the issue. I started to take a screen recording of me opening AstroImageJ, opening an image, trying to multi-aperture photometry etc. to give you a vision of the problem, but in preparation for doing that, I closed most of the other programs I had open on my machine at the time - such as SkySafari (big memory). Then, when I actually opened AstroImageJ, opened my 16 bit  8MB .fits file, and then clicked on the multi-aperture tool - everything worked as it should! Single aperture also worked as it should.

So, thinking maybe the memory allotment given to AstroImageJ was the issue, I increased it from 650 MB to 2000 MB (I have 8 GB of RAM), restarted, and tried the procedure again. The only thing open was Firefox and the Finder. This time, the malfunction occurred - clicking on the multi-aperture tool caused the image to disappear.

I decreased memory to 1000 MB, restarted, and things worked fine. Then, without closing AstroImageJ, I opened up a bunch of programs, including SkySafari, and things still worked fine. I then closed AstroImageJ, leaving the other programs open, and then reopened AstroImageJ. This time the problem reappeared. Closing other programs, restarting AstroImageJ, and things returned to the way they were intended - multiaperture works as planned.

So, not being a computer expert, and based on the limited trouble-shooting I tried, it appears that if you open AstroImageJ into an environment that has many memory intensive programs already open, that the images disappear into some sort of memory hole (reminder, AstroImageJ still reports them as being open in the Window menu). If AstroImageJ is opened before these other programs, however, the memory issue apparently is handled differently, and things worked, at least in my quick testing. So, that's what I've got for now. Will keep you posted...

(This is a problem that appears unique to AstroImageJ - haven't seen anything like this happen in ordinary ImageJ.)