Mac-based stacking of solar

[vineyard]

Hello,

A relative newcomer to AP here. And a Mac-based one too.  So, I was just wondering what would people recommend for registering & stacking solar images on a Mac?

I've seen ImPPG generate some amazing images here on SGL - @Rustedhas been v kind and even worked his ImPPG magic on some v clumsy shots of mine of the sun & moon in other threads.  But ImPPG doesn't work on Mac OS and I don't want to run the Windows emulator on my Mac.

So, is there another software that does that?  I use SiriL for my newbie deep sky attempts, but I've found that SiriL can't seem to register & stack the pre-processed images sharply (it cleans them up fine, but because the sun has moved across the FOV - I use alt-az for solar - the final registered & stacked image is a blur). I tried Pixinsight but that didn't work either (which may have been operator error tbh as I couldn't even get PI to stack some M42 images that SiriL did stack fine).

I'm hoping that someone somewhere knows of a piece of software that allows for registering & stacking a solar disk on a Mac OS?  Otherwise there's a real gap for Mac-based users...or maybe I'm just not using SiriL right for solar?  (While I'm by no means an expert, I suspect the problem may be one of registering b/c SiriL offers Lucy-Richardson deconvolution just as ImPPG does - the blurring of the stacked images suggests to me that the processed individual lights are not being lined up correctly?).

Thank you for any help,

Vin

[Captain Scarlet]

I too am a Mac user, and use Pixinsight, albeit not very intensively. For Lunar images, I find that FFTRegistration in Pixinsight works well, as long as the rotational differences are not too large between images (or between each image and the selected reference image). For example, if I take 100 still images in sequence using an alt-az mount, occasionally re-centreing the Moon in the frame, FFTRegistration works very well. If I hand-hold the camera, where the rotational translations are bigger and more random, I can't get it to work at all: my final "stacked" image is ghosted all over the place. Annoying, as those images are from the Lunar Eclipse a few months ago, I'm not sure what to do with my data.

Anyway, back to the point, all the above may well also apply to Solar imaging...

Cheers, Magnus

[GreatAttractor]

ImPPG is written using cross-platform libraries, so it can be compiled as a native OS X application. I have plans to eventually get myself a Mac, iron out any potential incompatibilities and create an OS X binary version for download.

For the time being, you could try running the Windows version via Wine (should work fine, at least in the non-GPU-accelerated mode).

[Owmuchonomy]

ImPPG and Autostakkert (2) run on a MAC in WINE. Follow the instructions on the Autostakkert website to install. It works for both.  Results of such solar processing in my link below.

Edited February 20, 2020 by Owmuchonomy

[vineyard]

Thanks all.  Yes I took the plunge and set up an emulator on my Mac, and dowloaded AS!3 - what a great piece of software!  Next thing is ImPPG.  Oh, and the Sun if/when it finally comes out!  Cheers, Vin