What software for planetary stacking

[skwinty (Steve)]

Hi All
Which software is best for planetary stacking. AIP4WIN has the facility but does not work and Deep Sky Stacker does not have the facility.
Is Registax the one to use ?

[Space]

I use Iris :
http://www.astrosurf.com/buil/us/iris/iris.htm

[iceman (Mike)]

The most popular is Registax, it's what I use. It's not perfect and it's buggy at times, but it does an amazing job and is reasonably fast.

Some people use Iris, and I've seen that even ImagesPlus has a planet align feature but I haven't used it.

[Dennis]

Hi Steve

Registax seems to be the de facto standard for AVIs captured with webcam devices. I have used it with my older Philips ToUcam and more recently, with The Imaging Source DMK & DBK industrial webcams. These devices tend to have chips between 640x480 and 1280x960. I’ve not tried Registax with multiple images from DSLRs which are typically at least 3000x2000 pixels.

I also use K3CCDTools to produce animations of e.g. lunar eclipses from the processed output of a DSLR in the form of several BMP files.

I have also used ImagesPlus for aligning DSLR images of a partial lunar and solar eclipse and it did a decent job despite the changing profile of the Moon or Sun on each image due to the shadow advancing across the disc.

Iris is another free and very powerful piece of software although I haven’t used it.

Registax is free; there is a limited functionality free version of K3CCDTools and ImagesPlus is a full on image processing package and the price of around US $180 reflects this.

What particular application did you have in mind?

Cheers

Dennis

[skwinty (Steve)]

Hi All
Thanks for the response.
I have used the dslr at prime focus on the 12" Newt and taken a number of pix of saturn and jupiter. As I said AIP4WIN planetary doesnt work and DSS doesnt have the function. I am a bit over budget at the moment having just bought a pillar ext and reticule eyepiece from Steve at Myastro so will give Registax and Iris a go.
Thanks again

[iceman (Mike)]

Oh for planetary, you really want to use a webcam with your 12" newt instead of the DSLR. The results will be much better.

Hard to believe that a $150 webcam can outperform a $2000 DSLR, but it's true on some targets.

[Matty P (Matt)]

I have found Registax the easiest to use for aligning and stacking planetary images.

It does it reasonable fast and gives you what I feel is the most flexibility compared to other programs.

That is just my opinion.

[nearlycritical]

Originally Posted by iceman

Oh for planetary, you really want to use a webcam with your 12" newt instead of the DSLR. The results will be much better.

Hard to believe that a $150 webcam can outperform a $2000 DSLR, but it's true on some targets.

I haven't done any astrophotography, could you give me a quick run down on why this is so, or what your experiences have been? I plan to use a 40D DSLR in the near future ...

[Matty P (Matt)]

Originally Posted by nearlycritical

I haven't done any astrophotography, could you give me a quick run down on why this is so, or what your experiences have been? I plan to use a 40D DSLR in the near future ...

Hi,

First of all, you have to decide what it is that you want to do. Is it Planetary imaging or Long exposure imaging because they are completely different and both need totally different equipment.

For planetary imaging. A webcam would be the best choice of camera because it is capable of capturing many of frames very quickly. This helps to freeze the seeing conditions and give you the best chance of a clear unblurred image.

Where as a DSLR camera although capable of planetary imaging is probably not the best choice. DLSR cameras are best suited for long exposure photograpghy for imaging the faint DSOs.

Hope this helps.