Software for photo aligment

[malau]

Hi all,


I took a series of comet photo. However due to my budget equipment (EQ3-2 with drive motor), the stars moved in some photos. Are there any software can crop the pics so that the stars looks like at the same place?
Thanks

[silv]

It's perfectly alright for a photo of a comet to show stars "trailing" - if trailing is what you mean with "moving". :)

However, DeepSkyStacker, DSS, lets you stack your comet photos in 2 different ways: one with focus on the comet (and the stars are lines) and one with focus on pinpoint stars (and the comet is a green line).

The result of both stacks you can then take over to GIMP or Photoshop and layer and mask them on top of each other so you get the good things from each and mask away the unwanted trails.

http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/technical.htm#cometstacking

[malau]

Thanks for your reply. However what I want to do is want to use these photos to make the comet video. Since the star position are not static due to the mount periodic error, so the stars look jumping in the video. Just see if there are any software can fix it instead of I do it manually

[kens]

I know its possible with SIRIL which runs on Linux but presumably you could do the same with IRIS on which SIRIL is based. With SIRIL the registered output is saved as a set of subframes so you could then assemble those into a video.
Looking at DSS I see there are also options to save a registered /calibrated file for each light frame. But I've never used that option so cannot vouch for it.

[Astrofriend]

Hi,
I do timelapse movies on comets sometimes.

If it's possible you can do a 1 point align on the comet core. The the star background will move. Or you can align on a star, the the comets move.

Fitswork is simple to use, I have a tutorial here and the software is free to download:
http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/tutorials/tutorial-fitswork/tutorial-fitswork.html

An alternative is AstroImageJ, more difficult to use but have some advantages:
http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/tutorials/tutorial-astroimagej/tutorial-aij-01-introduction.html

Here is one example of a comet video, not very good, more a test:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJzy-aQJe30

/Lars

[redbeard]

Nebulosity allows you to batch select images and align. I just did a quick test and it works. I then used PIPP to create the animation.

Good luck!