This post is for astrophotography (
- •
AP is a procedurally complex and detail oriented endeavor
•AP software can be amazingly complex and has a very steep learning curve- This is one of the reasons why instruction vs. personal discovery is so important – there are just not enough hours in the day/week/year/your life to learn more than a handful of these titles
- • Fortunately for us, a lot of them are FREE!!
• Fortunately for us, I will not be covering them all!
In this post, I will try to break this endeavor down by category and by using flow charts so you get a feel of the flow for using different pieces of software
- • You will notice that there are quite a few multi-purpose titles and many with identical/overlapping features
• The first section will show the categories and software that are at your disposal to plan, acquire, and process an image
• The second part will be object specific (DSO vs. Planetary) and how the procedural flow will determine which software titles are used for that particular object
- • Planetarium Programs, Atlases, and Planners
• Camera Control –DSLR and planetary imaging webcam control for this post
• Software Assisted Focusing
• Image Acquisition Automation
• Image Calibration, Aligning and Stacking
• Image Correction and Enhancement (Post-Processing)
• Autoguiding Software
• Photo Utilities
• Photoshop Filters and Actions
Planetarium programs, planners, and atlases let you find out what is up in the sky and help you plan your observing and
- • Stellarium {$Free}
• Cartes du Ciel {$Free}
• SkyTechX {$Free}
• Virtual Moon Atlas {$Free}
• C2A (Computer Aided Astronomy) {$Free}
• AstroPlanner – Aids in planning, visualization, and logging
• SkyTools 3 – Mostly for visual use but definitely aids in planning
• SkyMap Pro
• The SkyX
• Starry Night Pro 6/7/8
With camera control software, you can use your computer to control all of the functions and settings of your camera
- • N.I.N.A. (Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy) {$Free} – Camera and equipment control (color filters, auto-focusers, and mounts), Image acquisition
•APT (Astro Photography Tool) - Camera control, focus, image acquisition automation, and mount control.
• BackyardEOS & Backyard Nikon - Camera control, focus, image acquisition automation, drift alignment assist
• Sequence Generator Pro – controls equipment - cameras, color filters, auto-focusers and mounts
• Nebulosity 3/4 - Camera control, focus, image acquisition automation, image calibration, image processing
• Images Plus Camera Control -DSLR control, focusing, image acquisition automation
• Maxim DL -DSLR andCCD control and image processing
With webcam control software, you can use your computer to control all of the functions and settings of your guiding/planetary imaging webcam
- • AmCap - {$Free}
• SharpCap - {$Free}
• Fire Capture - {$Free}
• Astro Snap - {$Free}
• K3CCDTools - {$Free} version – Somewhat dated
Focusing the camera can be done by manual focusing and visual inspection of the Live-view image on the computer screen or the camera’s LCD; or using the acquisition software's automated process if you are equipped for that
- • Bahtinov Grabber - {$Free}
• Focus Max {$Free} - Focusing software that automates focusing if you have a motorized focuser that works with Maxim DL
• N.I.N.A. (Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy) {$Free} – Image acquisition, controls equipment - cameras, color filters, auto-focusers, and mounts
•APT (Astro Photography Tool)
• BackyardEOS/Nikon
• Sequence Generator Pro
• Nebulosity
• Images Plus Camera Control
• AstroArt
• MaximDSLR
This is where we have to break into two camps: deep sky object images and planetary/lunar images. We’ll start with deep sky object images using a
This is where we use the camera control programs because long exposure deep-sky
- •
DSLR Shutter {$Free} - image acquisition automation
• N.I.N.A. (Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy) {$Free} – Image acquisition and plate solve
•APT (Astro Photography Tool) - Image acquisition and plate solve
• BackyardEOS
• Sequence Generator Pro - Image acquisition and plate solve
• Nebulosity
• Images Plus Camera Control
• AstroArt
• MaximDSLR
Advanced Astro Imaging requires the "calibration, aligning and stacking" of all the .raw images. Your calibration frames (darks, flats, bias) and your object image frames (what we call “lights”) are “stacked” (combined) into a single “master” image. In other words, “Stacking" means combining and aligning many individual short exposures; your “light” frames and your calibration frames into a single “master” image. These processes (calibration, aligning and stacking) used to be a done separately (and still can be if you want) but it’s not needed anymore as dedicated astro image stacking programs will do all these steps in route to producing that “master” single image.
- • Deepsky Stacker (
DSS ) {$Free} - Image calibration, alignment, and stacking
• IRIS {$Free} -DSLR control, image acquisition automation
• Regim {$Free} - Image calibration, alignment, and stacking
• PixInsight – Advanced and very powerful image calibration, alignment, stacking, and post-processing
• Nebulosity - Image calibration, alignment, and stacking
•AIP (Astronomical Image Processing - Image calibration, correction, enhancement
• Images Plus – Image processing
• AstroArt - Image calibration, alignment, stacking
• Maxim DL - Image calibration, alignment, and stacking
Planetary/Lunar
- • AmCap - {$Free}
• SharpCap - {$Free}
• Fire Capture - {$Free}
• Astro Snap - {$Free}
• K3CCDTools - {$Free} version
Image stacking for Planetary/Lunar Images is a multi-step process for your video file. Let’s say your video file has 1,000 frames in it. We would like to review each frame and grade it based on how clear the image is. Fortunately, we don’t have to do this manually. The two main image stacking titles will automatically do this for you. Obviously, it will take your computer some time to work its way through all those frames. To make this lengthy process easier we use an additional title that pre-processes all those frames so a lot of the work is already done before we put it in the stacking software.
- • PIPP (Planetary Image Pre-Processing) {$Free} -- Crops each frame, selects only the best quality frames (you decide how many) to speed up the stacking software
• AutoStakkert! 2 or 3 - {$Free} -- for stacking planetary images
• RegiStax 6 {$Free} - for stacking planetary images
Once your images are calibrated, aligned and stacked giving you a Master Image, you will want to “stretch” the histogram to bring out faint detail. Then you can correct for things such as color balance, and increase the contrast and saturation to make faint details more pleasing artistically. You will probably also want to apply some type of noise reduction and sharpness, and you may want to apply even more sophisticated enhancement techniques.
Now that your stacking software has given you your single master image, it is time to apply some artistic enhancements (contrast, saturation, denoise, sharpen, etc). The following software titles apply to both types of images with a few exceptions.
- • IRIS {$Free}
• GIMPshop {$Free}
• Photoshop
• Photoshop Elements
• PixInsight
•AIP (Astronomical Image Processing)
• Nebulosity
• Images Plus
• AstroArt
•StarTools - post-processing for noise reduction, fine detail enhancement, and color calibration
• MaximDSLR
• Registax 6 {$Free} – used to enhance your planetary images with its “wavelets” function
By automatically following a star (tracking) and then making small corrections in right ascension and declination (guiding), higher tracking accuracy is obtained. This allows for long-exposure deep-sky
Autoguiding involves using a separate
- • GuideDog {$Free}
• PHD 2 {$Free}
• Metaguide {$Free}
• Guidemaster {$Free}
• AstroArt
• MaximDSLR
These programs perform useful additional functions like allowing you to plate solve, open FITS format files, perform noise reduction, and create thumbnails for indexing and archiving, etc.
- • AstroTortilla {$FREE} – Plate solving freeware
• Platesolve 2 {$FREE} – Plate solver
• All Sky Plate Solver {$FREE} – Another plate solver
• Dark Library {$Free} - Sort Dark frames by EXIF temperature data
• EXIF Reader {$Free} - Reads EXIF data, also a thumbnail and image viewer
• FITS Liberator {$Free} - FITS file format image handling software
• Noiseware Community Edition {$Free} - Noise Reduction software
• Background Subtraction Toolkit {$Free} - Remove gradients and vignetting
• IrfanView {$Free} – Very powerful image viewer and manipulator
• Picassa {$Free} - Thumbnail and Image Viewer and database
• StarTrails - {$Free} - Stack individual frames to create a star-trail image – way cool!
These filters and actions work inside of Photoshop and perform specialty functions for astronomy, such as gradient and noise reduction
- • Astronomy Tools - Noel Carboni's Photoshop actions for various
AP techniques
• Annie's Astro Actions - Astrophotography specific Photoshop actions
• Noise Ninja - Noise Reduction filter
• GradientXTerminator - Removes vignetting and gradients
• HLVG – Hasta La Vista Green – Removes the “green” tint a lot of images acquired during processing
The type of software and the order in which you use it is usually determined by what type of object you are imaging.
These are two major object categories - Deep Sky objects and Solar System objects. These two different categories highly influence the procedures you use from planning all the way to looking at YOUR pretty picture on the computer screen.
This presentation on software doesn’t even address the hundreds of websites that can aid in your efforts to image the night sky. All of the areas that we used in this post to categorize the software can also be used to categorize the websites that provide many similar functions. Additionally, the web has hundreds of tutorials for using just about every title mentioned. Final thoughts:
- • Remember – All software has a user interface that you may or may not like
- Experiment, see what fits your needs, abilities, and preferences
- Keeping in mind there are only so many hours in the day to learn new software
I hope this post has helped you gain a better understanding of not only the plethora of
Let's make this a living document because the titles are somewhat "perishable", so additions, subtractions, and suggestions are welcome.
Happy imaging,
JT