Framalyzer is a C++ library under development to analyze 2-dimensional images of variable stellar objects. I will post more information about this project as I get time. The basic idea is that with modern CCD technology, a set of images is generated during the course of an observing session. Each image is essentially a literal count of the number of photons that hit the CCD Camera in the area corresponding to every pixel location within the exposure time period. These images must somehow be analyzed and compared to each other to deduce the quantitative variations in the brightness (magnitude) of the stars in the frame. This system can be used to generate entire light curves for eclipsing binary star systems. The results from CCD based observations are in general of a much higher quality than those from older photomultiplier tubes.
Contact me if you are interested in participating in the development of Framalyzer or have ideas/suggestions.
Well here is a rough sketch on the initial design ideas for Framalyzer & Binalyzer. Basically there is one core module and the only function this would perform is store the image/data. Everything else (to use the data) will be written as a plugin for the core module. This includes:
This means that anybody can write a plugin for Framalyzer and hopefully have it work with everything else that already works with Framalyzer. The source code will be published under some sort of open-source license. The idea is to eventually be able to have a pure C++ library with modules/plugins that everyone can use. The main advantage of this approach is that as new algorithms are made available, they can be simply be added and made available for use to everybody who already has some version of Framalyzer installed and running.
Currently Framalyzer involves the heavy use of Fourier transforms to analyze images. However, there are many other techniques for manipulating images, and all of them depend on what it is that needs to be extracted from them.