Deep Sky Stacking programs?

[Lester]

Hi everyone,

well I am beginning in the realm of DSO imaging with 20Da and f 6.3 focal reducer on 14" SCT. Tried a few exposures 1,2 and 3 minutes with no correcting at this stage. Two minutes seems okay for keeping stars pin point. Does any one here use Deep Sky Stacker for stacking DSO images or do most of you use Images Plus, which I have heard is very good?

Here is a 2 minute exposure of open cluster near the tail of the scorpion sorry I don't know its name or NGC number. Taken at iso 1600.

[rogerg]

I haven't used either of those you mentioned. I use RegiStar to stack & combine, then Photoshop for the other processing. I have nothing bad to say about RegiStar, only good - it's worked perfectly for me sofar.

Roger.

[EzyStyles]

great shot Lester! stars are perfect and beautiful image scale. more more :)

[Lester]

Hi Roger and Eric,

thanks for your replies.

[EzyStyles]

forgot to mention i use registax for stacking.

[ving]

whats the diference between registar and registax?

[Lester]

Thanks Eric,

will be looking into that, as I already use Registax for planetary stacking.

FSS (little robin) from down south has whispered the same into my ear.

[EzyStyles]

goood question Ving. Different programs but i havent use registar.

[Lester]

Good Question Ving,

Keep on Mooooooing.

[rogerg]

I don't know everything about this topic.. but from my experience..

RegiStax is well suited to planetary work where you are concentrating on one small object in the FOV. It works around you selecting an object to align on, it then compares that area of the image to align, stack, calculate differences, etc. In theory the "Rotate" feature of Registax allows you to select multiple alignment points, I've not had success with this on wide field images.

RegiStar is well suited to wide field work where you are wanting to align the entire frame. You don't select an alignment feature, it identifies what it considers to be stars in the image and then aligns them all.

RegiStax is very memory intensive and slow at processing large (8 megapizel) images. RegiStar does them without working up a sweat and uses very little memory (usually around 100mb when I'm stacking 10 x DSLR shots).

RegiStax is very well suited to video's and 1000's of frames, more so than RegiStar where it's more suited to a smaller number (10's or 100's) of individual images.

RegiStar is extremely tollorant of differences between images - I have aligned and stacked images with it that other app's (RegiStax, CCDSoft) can't align.

RegiStar will align images when they are different in almost all regards: scale, distoritions (lensing etc), rotation, position, etc etc.

That's about how I'd sum it up.

Roger.

[ving]

hmm.. thanks roger.

lester: MOOOOOO!

[33South]

Registax is free, but Registar is only free for a 30 day evaluation then US$ 149.00

[rogerg]

True, I forgot to mention that bit. I tried for many weeks to stack my DSLR images in RegiStax and CCDSoft before I gave up and forked out the US$149.

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear from people who use Image Plus and Deep Sky Stacker - I haven't had any hands on experience with these, haven't even seen Deep Sky Stacker actually. I don't plan on buying either as RegiStar fills my needs but it'd still be interesting to hear about them.

Roger.

[Lester]

Roger,

Deep sky stacker is also free, I hunted back through IIS and found it. Sorry I don't know how to shift the link to here.

[RAJAH235]

FWIW. Lester, just 'highlight the URL', then copy n paste into the message window. All automatic. Almost hands free stuff.
HTH :D L.

[joe_smith]

http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html is this the one Lester ?

[Lester]

Yep, thanks Joe,

I have downloaded it, but that is all at this stage.

[Octane]

Lester,

That'd be M6. The Butterfly Cluster. I love it; it's such a beautiful cluster. That offset red star really does it for me.

Here's my shot here (http://members.optusnet.com.au/hamidqureshi/images/M6_Butterfly_Cluster_P.jpg); it was a single 60-second exposure which I was simply doing for focusing purposes.

Taken through 8" LX90LNT, Canon EOS-350D. Diffraction spikes recreated using 30-pound fishing wire.

Regards,
Humayun

[Lester]

Hi Humayun,

thanks for identifying the cluster for me. Like the depth of detail in your image, well done.

[tornado33]

I use IRIS myself http://www.astrosurf.com/buil/us/iris/iris.htm
It has a steepish learning curve, but its free :)
Scott