Last Updated: 23rd October 2015

1. Astronomy Stacking Software For Mac
2. Photo Stacking Software

Siril, a free astronomical image processing software. Siril is meant to be Iris for Linux (sirI-L). It is an astronomical image processing tool, able to convert, pre-process images, help aligning them automatically or manually, stack them and enhance final images. In 2017, it also began to work on Mac OS X and Windows.

ASTRO COMMAND CENTER. The ASTRO Command Center software enables full configuration of the adjustable settings for these ASTRO devices: MixAmp Pro TR (late 2015 release), A50 Gen 3 with Base Station (late 2016 release), A20 Wireless (late 2017 release). Aug 01, 2018  Recommended starting software for planetary imaging: OACapture - for taking pictures or videos: free. SiriL - for stacking planetary images: free. PixInsight - for processing your planetary images to get the most detail out of them: $230 EUR. Unfortunately planetary processing software is a gap right now on the Mac. Jan 04, 2017  Registax 6. Registax 6 is a powerful and mature stacking program containing sophisticated and great image enhancement features. It is designed specifically for stacking images and frames from video files and is the program of choice for many astronomers and astrophotographers thanks to its simplicity of use. Jul 29, 2015  Stacking for Mac Users - posted in DSLR & Digital Camera Astro Imaging & Processing: Ive been using Keiths Image Stacker for my astro pics for a while and cant help but wonder what else life has to offer. All the free stacking software out there is only available for Windows though. Mar 19, 2016  AutoStakkert! (AS!3, AS!2) is lucky imaging software used to automatically analyze, align, and stack images of the Sun, Moon and Planets that were taken through a telescope. Using a fast video camera, noisy and slightly distorted images are obtained, that can be combined into a single high quality image using this software. Is free software, easy to use, very fast, and generally.

A common approach to astrophotography has become the use of Digital SLR cameras (DSLR). These are relatively cheap, can be used for astronomy and ordinary terrestrial photography, and produce surprisingly good astronomy images so have become quite popular.

There’s a few basic steps required for getting started in DSLR astrophotography. I would summarise them as:
1. Buy a camera
2. Buy a tripod, telescope or other tracking platform
3. Acquire a piece of software to help take long exposure photographs
4. Acquire a piece of software to process (including stack) the photographs you take.

The question often arises from the above of what piece of software to use for stacking and processing the resulting images that you take using your camera. Or, also often the case, people don’t realise that there is software available to make this easy. So here I am going to list a few options, hopefully making it easier for anyone who finds this page.

If you know of programs which are suitable for DSLR astrophotography image processing that are not on this list please let me know, also let me know if information here needs updating. Thank you.

Software suitable for stacking and/or processing astrophotography DSLR images:

Deep Sky Stacker

This is a free and very capable piece of software for aligning, combining and performing post processing of astrophotographs from digital SLR cameras. The best thing about this software is that it’s free, and amazingly capable for something that is free.

This software will read a wide variety of file formats including Canon RAW format, and process them. I have had some issues with processing canon RAW files with respect to getting good colour balance post-stacking so often choose to first convert the RAW files to TIF before processing. This may simply be a lack of experience on my part, as I do not use this software often.

The registering capabilities of Deep Sky Stacker are very good but do not match the capabilities of RegiStar or PixInsight when it comes to getting a good alignment of frames. There are often cases I find DSS will not correctly align frames where as RegiStar and PixInsight will.

I don’t tend to like the post-processing capabilities of Deep Sky Stacker so tend to finish my use of DSS at the point it has stacked the “Autosave.tif” and take that file in to PhotoShop from there to perform post-processing.

Deep Sky Stacker’s biggest advantage is probably it’s ease of use (very intuitive and easy to use interface) and it’s flexibility with it supporting all major file formats and handling various scenarios covering most astrophotography needs.

Find Deep Sky Stacker here: http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html

Starry Landscape Stacker

This is an Apple/Mac program and a great option for those who do not use Windows. It is effectively a good alternative to Deep Sky Stacker for those who use Apple PC’s.

Find Starry Landscape Stacker here: https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/starry-landscape-stacker/id550326617?mt=12

PixInsight

PixInsight is an advanced astrophotography image processing piece of software. I now have some experience using PixInsight for processing CCD images from an SBIG ST8-XME camera and RAW CR2 files from a Canon 6D DSLR and can certainly see the potential of the software.

If you ant a one-stop-shop for astrophotography image processing and you are happy to spend the $250 on PixInsight, there’s a very good chance you need none of the other pieces of software listed on this page. Having said that, you will be up for a steep learning curve.

PixInsight operates in a very different way to other software. They even seem to put buttons on dialogue boxes around the opposite way to what is most common just to confuse the user. The difference in how processing is done and the user interface in PixInsight makes the learning curve very steep and troubling at first. There are video tutorials online which are almost essential for getting an understanding of how to use the software before you lose your hair trying, but once concerned it is proving to be very powerful. It took me a few attempts coming back to PixInsight over a few months before I became familiar enough with it and stopped hitting brick walls to be able to process FIT and DSLR images with some confidence.

Functions such as applying a LinearFit across LRGB frames, and the Dynamic Background Extraction function on any image to flatten image backgrounds are particularly useful and relatively easy to use once you understand the basics of the PixInsight user interface.

Where other processing software has failed to produce a good result of DSLR images (software such as using DSS, RegiStar and Photoshop) PixInsight has excelled and brought out more detail in images than I realised existed in the raw data.

There is no doubt to my knowledge that PixInsight is the most advanced piece of software for stacking astrophotography deep sky images. It’s set of processes and plugins is both extensive and powerful. The catch is only in it’s usability and how patient you must be to work through its steep learning curve to achieve good results.

I would suggest if you are going to use PixInsight, start with DSS and understand the basics of astrophotography image processing before you begin the daunting process of understanding how to use PixInsight. Also, if you have easy to align good quality images then you will likely get a very good result from DSS in a much quicker time frame than PixInsight which will require you to perform more steps.

If you want to process DSLR images with PixInsight you will need a beefy machine to run it on. It will easily consume all of my 16 gigabytes of RAM on my Core i7 64bit windows machine when processing a stack of 20 DSLR images. Programs such as RegiStar work in a significantly smaller footprint.

PixInsight is available as 45 day free trial.

Find PixInsight here: http://www.pixinsight.com/

StarStaX

StarStaX is a multi-platform image stacking software. From their website: https://www.markus-enzweiler.de/StarStaX/StarStaX.html

StarStaX is a fast multi-platform image stacking and blending software, which allows to merge a series of photos into a single image using different blending modes. It is developed primarily for

Star Trail Photography where the relative motion of the stars in consecutive images creates structures looking like star trails. Besides star trails, it can be of great use in more general image blending tasks, such as noise reduction or synthetic exposure enlargement.

StarStaX has advanced features such as interactive gap-filling and can create an image sequence of the blending process which can easily be converted into great looking time-lapse videos.

StarStaX is currently under development. The current version 0.70 was released on December 16, 2014. StarStaX is available as a free download for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.

Find StarStaX here: https://www.markus-enzweiler.de/StarStaX/StarStaX.html

CCDStack

CCDStack is one of a suit of products made by CCDWare aligned to advanced usage of telescopes.

I have used CCDStack a reasonable amount now for processing images from my ST8-XME astronomy camera and find it very usable and relatively powerful. I like features such as being able to see what data is being rejected by a sigma function on light frames and doing this very quickly and easily compared to PixInsight which shows you no preview before processing the full stack. This makes it very easy to tweak stacking parameters for a good result and apply different filtering to individual frames (such as when a satellite passes through a frame, applying harsher exclusion to that frame).

CCDStack will easily in only a handful of steps register your frames, normalise (apply weighting to) frames, apply data rejection to frames and combine frames in to a stack using weighting determined by the normalisation.

I found CCDStack to be a good and logical step up from CCDSoft. It is usable and has intuitive and useful functionality. The program seems relatively light weight also, working efficiently with a large number of files.

I have not tried CCDStack for DSLR images. It does apparently open CR2 RAW files (amongst other formats) however in my quick attempt it did not open CR2 files from my Canon 6D (I’m unsure why).

Find CCDStacker here: http://www.ccdware.com/products/ccdstack/

Astro Pixel Processor

Astro Pixel Processor is a complete image processing software package: https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/

TBA on details – I’m still testing this one!

Maxim

I primarily use MaximDL for image reduction, as it’s image reduction process is very painless. Provide it with a directory of all your reduction .FIT files and it will nicely sort them in to a database of reduction groups to be applied to any image you open. Open the .FIT needing to be calibrated/reduced and it will apply the appropriate reduction frames without you choosing reduction files of the correct temperature, binning, etc. This is significantly easier than any of the other packages which all require you to do more manual work with reduction frames. The benefits of MaximDL’s reduction frame handling for .FIT files may or may not be transferred to use of DSLR raw files – I have not tried reduction of DSLR images in Maxim.

MaximDL’ stacking seems fair however I haven’t had need to use it for alignment and stacking. I also haven’t tried MaximDL for large images such as DSLR, with the largest I typically use in Maxim being those from my SBIG ST8-XME.

Find MaximDSLR here: http://www.cyanogen.com/products/maxdslr_main.htm

RegiStar

This is a fantastic piece of software for aligning and combining individual astrophotographs from digital SLR cameras. It works very efficiently with large files, is amazingly capable in aligning photographs and has quite good stacking algorithms built in as a bonus.

This software is primarily intended for simply the registering (aligning) of frames such that they can be combined. This piece of software is so good that you can combine old film images with new digital images, or digital images from different cameras with different focal lengths and all sorts. It will also easily handles field rotation (fixed tripod shots are OK) and pretty much any other distortion.

The problems I have with this software is that it does not read Canon RAW files, so conversion to some other format such as TIF is required first, that it does not handle reduction of the images which leaves you needing another piece of software (like PhotoShop) to do that manually first, and that when combining frames in to a stack it does not provide any weighting of frames or sigma exclusion of noise in frames leaving this piece of software primarily useful for registering frames and saving those registered frames, not stacking them.

RegiStar’s excellence at registering frames comes with a price, and in this case that’s about US$159.

The version of RegiStar that I am familiar with is 1.0, and it hasn’t been updated for some time (2004). This means it’s not up to date with current file types (RAW) but doesn’t detract from it’s excellent ability to align TIF images. Increasingly, as time ticks on and no further updates are published, you would be wise considering an alternative piece of software which is updated more regularly, such as PixInsight.

Find RegiStar here: http://www.aurigaimaging.com/

ImagePlus

I cannot say much about ImagePlus as I have not used it for DSLR image processing. However many people do and it comes highly recommended. You can find out plenty of information about it around the web.

Find ImagePlus here: http://www.mlunsold.com/

The line is becoming blurred between DSLR and Mirrorless digital cameras such as those by Sony, Nikon and Canon, and CMOS sensors used in dedicated astronomical cameras such as those by ZWO and QHY.

There are many different types of software that may help you astrophotography:

• Camera Control
• Software-Assisted Focusing
• Image Acquisition Automation
• Plate Solving
• Image Calibration, Aligning and Stacking
• Image Correction and Enhancement
• Autoguiding Software
• Photo Utilities
• Photoshop Filters and Actions
• Tutorials on Image Processing of Astrophotos
• Planetarium Programs and Atlases

DSLR Camera Control

With camera control software, you can use your computer to control all of the functions and settings of your camera, such as setting the ISO, opening the shutter, and shooting multiple frames for stacking.

Astronomy Stacking Software For Mac

With the current generation of Canon EOS DSLR cameras software by the camera manufacturer will control all functions of the camera. This is accomplished through a single USB-2 Cable and includes control of the bulb setting for exposures longer than 30 seconds. This software also allows viewing of the Live-view real-time image on the computer and focusing.

With previous camera generations of Canon DSLRs and Nikon DSLR cameras, the camera manufacturer's software could control all camera functions except one critical one for astrophotography: the ability to shoot exposures longer than 30 seconds with the bulb setting. This major drawback necessitated the use of third-party software to control the camera and access bulb exposures longer than 30 seconds through the use of a serial to bulb port cable. For old cameras, two cables were necessary for astrophotography: one USB cable to control camera functions and one serial to bulb port cable for long exposures.

Software-Assisted Focusing

The latest generation cameras allow focusing through the camera manufacturer's software. This can be done by manual focusing and visual inspection of the Live-view image on the computer, or by autofocus if the camera is shooting through an autofocus lens.

For previous generation cameras without Live-View, an image had to be downloaded to the computer and then visually examined for focus accuracy. Programs will download an image and then examine a star and give a readout of the star's diameter or brightness. This metric-assisted focusing is objective and did not rely on any visual interpretation to determine focus.

Through a process of manual trial and error, accurate focus could be achieved through software-assisted focusing.

The latest DSLR camera manufacturer's software can make focusing very easy with Live-view, and some, like BackYardEOS, BackYardNIKON and AstroPhotography Tool use metric-assisted focusing for astrophotography.

If you have a mototized focuser, you can use software-assisted focusing to autofocus your telescope.

Image Acquisition Automation

Serious deep-sky astrophotography requires shooting many short exposures. This can be done manually, but it is very tedious. For example, faint deep-sky objects may require several hours worth of 5 minute exposures that are later stacked or combined in subsequent image processing.

Software such as Images Plus or MaxDSLR can automate this process. You simply specify in the software that you want the camera to shoot, say, 25 exposures of 5 minutes each at ISO 1600 with a pause of 10 seconds between frames (to give the system time to download each image).

The latest software provided by Nikon and Canon also provides the functionality for this type of automated image acquisition with the latest generation of DSLR cameras.

Plate Solving

There are several free pieces of software that will take an image (a short exposure) and 'plate solve' it for you. That means it examines patterns of stars in the image to determine the exact center of the field of view of your camera and scope. Once this is determined, the software can send these coordinates to your mount so the mount knows exactly where it is pointing to improve accuracy of GoTo's.

Plate solving is also useful if you shoot the same object over several nights. You can then solve an image from the first night, and store it. Then the next time out, you can just use that solve to frame your object for that night.

Image Calibration, Aligning and Stacking

Advanced astronomical imaging requires the 'calibration' of the raw original images. Calibration means removing unwanted fixed signals (such as thermal current and bias), and correction for signal modifications (such as vignetting) so that the raw image accurately represents the intensity of light incident on the sensor during the exposure. We will discuss these topics in detail in future sections, but right now lets just talk briefly about the software required for image calibration.

Both Canon and Nikon usually include image processing software with their cameras, but this software is for processing normal daytime images. You can not use it for image calibration, aligning, or stacking at all.

To calibrate your original raw astronomical images, you will require some type of special astronomical image processing software, such as Images Plus, MaxDSLR, AIP (Astronomical Image Processing), AstroArt, IRIS, Deepsky Stacker or Regim.

'Stacking' means combining many individual short exposures into a master image by any of several mathematical processes such as averaging, or addition. The term originates in the days of film astrophotography where images were literally stacked on top of one another to improve contrast and color.

You will also need to align your images so that the stars in them line up perfectly.

Whatever software you use for image calibration will almost certainly also do aligning and image stacking. It is possible to align and stack images in Photoshop, but for more than a couple of frames, the process is extremely tedious and not as accurate as with a dedicated astronomical image processing program.

Image Correction and Enhancement

Once your images are calibrated, aligned and stacked, you will want to correct for things such as color balance, and increase the contrast to make faint details more visible. You will probably also want to apply some type of noise reduction, and you may want to apply more sophisticated enhancement techniques.

These processes can be done in the previously mentioned astronomical image processing programs such as Images Plus, MaxDSLR, AIP (Astronomical Image Processing), AstroArt, and IRIS.

However, at this stage of image processing, many astrophotographers prefer to switch to a general image processing program such as Photoshop.

Autoguiding Software

For long-exposure deep-sky astrophotography, guiding during the exposure can be very useful in producing higher quality images. By manually or automatically following a star by making corrections in right ascension and declination higher tracking accuracy is obtained.

Autoguiding involves using a separate CCD or Webcam to monitor a stars position and then send corrections to the telescope's mounting to guide or follow the star with high accuracy to compensate for inaccuracies in the mount's tracking.

SBIG used to make the ST-4 and ST-V which were stand alone autoguiders which did not require a computer. These units have been discontinued but can be found used on Astromart.

CCD cameras and webcams can be also be used as autoguiders, but software, such as GuideDog and PHD, is required to run on a computer that interfaces between the autoguider and mount.

Photo Utilities

These programs perform useful functions like allowing you to open FITS format files, perform noise reduction, and create thumbnails for indexing and archiving.

Photoshop Filters and Actions

These filters and actions work inside of Photoshop and perform specialty functions for astronomy, such as gradient and noise reduction.

Tutorials on Image Processing of Astrophotos

Tutorials in book and video format teach you how to do astrophotography, and use programs such as Images Plus for image calibration and Photoshop for image correction and enhancement.

Planetarium Programs and Atlases

Planetarium programs and atlases let you find out what is up in the sky, and plan your observing and astrophotography session.

Photo Stacking Software

Prices on all commercial software are subject to change without notice.

Note that you should be able to run any of the Windows programs listed above on your Mac with OS-X and software like Parallels or VMware Fusion.

Midnightkite also has a nice collection of links to lots of other astronomical related software for a variety of operating systems.

Astrophotography How-To Books by Jerry Lodriguss

If you like the information you have read here, I have several books that you may find of interest.

If you think there is a lot of information here on these web pages, just wait until you see how much more there is in these books!

Beginner's Guide to DSLR Astrophotography

This HTML book for beginning astrophotographers explains how to take beautiful images with your digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera using simple step-by-step techniques that anyone can learn.

You will see how easy it is to take great pictures with very modest equipment and basic methods that are within everyone's ability.

With this book you will learn how to take amazing images of the night sky with your DSLR camera.

Get Started in DSLR Astrophotography Today!

Beginner's Guide to Astronomical Image Processing

This book written in HTML5 is a digital download. It is for beginning astrophotographers and explains in step-by-step detail how to stack your images in DeepSkyStacker and then process them in Photoshop.

You will learn how to improve the brightness, contrast and color of your deep-sky images to produce beautiful results.

The book also includes 25 video tutorials on each step of image processing.

Get started in Astronomical image processing today!

Advanced Guide to DSLR Astrophotography

This HTML book for more advanced imagers. It explains how digital cameras work in more technical detail and gives step-by-step directions for more advanced imaging techniques.

It also tells you on how to process your images in Photoshop, with step-by-step directions that will produce beautiful results.

The CD-ROM also includes more than 100 minutes of video tutorials on image processing.

Take your astrophotography to the next level!

A Guide to DSLR Planetary Imaging

This HTML book will show you how to take planetary images with your Live-View equipped DSLR. It explains the basics of high-resolution planetary imaging and gives step-by-step directions on how to shoot exciting pictures the Sun and Moon and fascinating planets like Jupiter, Saturn and Mars.

It also tells you on how to process your images in programs like RegiStax and AutoStakkert!, with step-by-step directions that will produce beautiful results.

The CD-ROM also includes more than 100 minutes of video tutorials on image processing.

Get started with planetary photography with your DSLR today!

Astrophotographer's Guide to the Deep Sky

This HTML book will help you answer the question 'what should I shoot tonight?'

It will provide you with detailed information and examples of the many beautiful objects in the deep sky that you can photograph with your own equipment.

A master list of objects includes 500 of the best and most photogenic galaxies, nebulae, supernovae remnants, stars, star clusters and constellations. This list can be sorted by object name, object type, catalog number, constellation, right ascension and focal length.

Images of more than 275 select objects visible from the northern hemisphere are displayed on individual pages with photographic information and details about these objects.

All-sky constellation charts are clickable with links to individual constellation images. These, in turn, have objects plotted on them that link to object pages.

A local sidereal time calculator will tell you when objects are on the meridian where they are highest in the sky and best placed for photography.

Discover the many fantastic targets in the deep sky!

Photoshop for Film Astrophotographers

This HTML book is a guide to basic digital correction and advanced enhancement techniques for film astrophotos in Adobe Photoshop image-processing software.

Whether you are a beginning amateur astrophotographer, or a seasoned veteran, you will learn new and exciting techniques.

Use Photoshop to produce visually stunning images!

These books will help you to avoid those bad practices that lead to poor images. I made just about every mistake you could make when I was first starting out and did not know what I was doing. You don't have to make these same mistakes. You too can learn the secrets of deep-sky astrophotography!

Don't waste your long and hard efforts at astrophotography - find out how thousands of others just like you have gotten excellent results by using these books.

You can do it too! What are you waiting for?