Developing and supporting software is fun, but it also takes up a lot of time. If you like AutoStakkert!, and would like to support me in developing it, I present you with the option to give a (small) donation via Paypal. Registax Version 6 A Quickstart Tutorial For the purposes of this tutorial I will be using Jupiter as the subject. First click the 'select' tab at the top upper left and choose an AVI file you are ready to process. With the image open one needs to set some of the parameters before aligning the frames. May 06, 2011 RegiStax 5 V5.1 update (28 april 2010) Release 5.1.9.2 (1847 Kb) V5.1 update (7 april 2010, updated 10 april 2010) Release 5.1.9.1 (1846 Kb). Previous V5 release (22 dec 2009) Release 5.1.0.2 (2030Kb). Initial V5 release (21 mar 2009) Final- release 5.0.2.8 (1863Kb) Manual (21 feb 2009) Manual RegiStax 4.
It's been a good three years now since I swapped my HP laptop for a Macbook Pro. In the mean time, I've started doing a bit more astrophotography and of course the change of operating system has affected the tools I use to obtain and process photos.
Amateur astronomers have traditionally mostly used Windows, so there are a lot of Windows tools, both freeware and payware, to help. I used to run the freeware ones in Wine on Ubuntu with varying levels of success.
When I first got the Mac, I had a lot of trouble getting Wine to run reliably and eventually ended up doing my alignment and processing manually in The Gimp. However, that's time consuming and rather fiddly and limited to stacking static exposures.
However, I've recently started finding quite a bit of Mac OS based astrophotography software. I don't know if that means it's all fairly new or whether my Google skills failed me over the past years :-)
Software
I thought I'd document what I use, in the hope that I can save others who want to use their Macs some searching.
Some are Windows software, but run OK on Mac OS X. You can turn them into normal double click applications using a utility called WineSkin Winery.
Obtaining data from video camera:
- oaCapture (MacOS X, free)
- AstroImager (Mac OS X, payware, free trial)
Format-converting video data:
- Handbrake (Mac OS X, free, open source)
Processing video data:
- AutoStakkert! (Windows + Wine, free for non-commercial use, donationware)
Obtaining data from DSLR:
- AstroDSLR (Mac OS X, payware, free trial)
Processing and stacking DSLR files and post-processing video stacks:
- RegiStax (Windows + Wine, free)
- Nebulosity (Mac OS X, payware, free trial)
Post-processing:
- The Gimp (Max OS X, free, open source)
Telescope guiding:
- AstroGuider (Mac OS X, payware, free trial)
- PHD2 (Mac OS X, free, open source)
Hardware
A few weeks ago I bought a ZWO ASI120MC-S astro camera, as that was on sale and listed by Nebulosity as supported by OSX. Until then I'd messed around with a hacked up Logitech webcam, which seemed to only be supported by the Photo Booth app.
I've not done any guiding yet (I need a way to mount the guide scope on the main scope - d'oh) but the camera works well with Nebulosity 4 and oaCapture. I'm looking forward to being able to grab Jupiter with it in a month or so and Saturn and Mars later this year.
The image to the right is a stack of 24x5 second unguided exposures of the trapezium in M42. Not too bad for a quick test on a half-moon night.
Settings
I've been fiddling with Nebulosity abit, to try and get it to stack the RAW images from my Nikon D750 as colour. I found a conversion matrix that was supposed to be decent, but as it turns out that made all images far too blue.
The current matrix I use is listed below. If you find a better one, please let me know.
R | G | B | |
---|---|---|---|
R | 0.50 | 0.00 | 1.00 |
G | 0.00 | 1.00 | 0.00 |
B | 1.00 | 0.00 | 0.50 |
Registax For Mac Download Version
iCap is authored by The Imaging Source and has been specifically designed for use with Celestron Skyris astronomical CCD cameras. The software ships with all Celestron Skyris astronomical cameras, powered by The Imaging Source. Using iCap, you can do the following:
Registax 6 Download Windows 10
- Set all camera parameters.
- See the live image data stream from the camera.
- Snap singular images from the camera and save them as BMP or JPG files.
- Capture image sequences and save the single images as enumerated BMP or JPG files.
- Capture image sequences and save them as lossless, uncompressed AVI files. These files can be post-processed in other astronomy applications, such as RegiStax.