ASTAP

[bomberbaz]

Has anyone got any experience with using the ASTAP programme, I would like to know more about it 

The home page for it is here ASTAP, Astrometric Stacking Program (hnsky.org) but having had a quick whizz through it, it appears to be something of a one page bible!

Anyway, before I dive in head first I feel some background info and user experience would be a good idea if there is anyone who can help with this!

cheers

steve 

[ONIKKINEN]

ASTAP is the king of platesolving, if you're using some other software to capture (like NINA) you can still let ASTAP handle the platesolving on its own. There is also a sky quality measurement tool in ASTAP where you can measure your sky brightness from the images you have taken and dont have to rely on some external measurement like lightpollution.map. You can also do image annotation with the most common deep sky objects in the M,NGC,IC,PGC,Common stars catalogues. There is a blink tool as well, something that is missing from other free stacking software (as far as im aware). I know the tool does stacking as well, but this i have not used myself so cant say how it performs.

Handy tool, great price to performance ratio being free and all.

[bomberbaz]

41 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

ASTAP is the king of platesolving, if you're using some other software to capture (like NINA) you can still let ASTAP handle the platesolving on its own. There is also a sky quality measurement tool in ASTAP where you can measure your sky brightness from the images you have taken and dont have to rely on some external measurement like lightpollution.map. You can also do image annotation with the most common deep sky objects in the M,NGC,IC,PGC,Common stars catalogues. There is a blink tool as well, something that is missing from other free stacking software (as far as im aware). I know the tool does stacking as well, but this i have not used myself so cant say how it performs.

Handy tool, great price to performance ratio being free and all.

Thanks for the reply, yes free is always a great price. I have to be honest the main thing that interests me is the bayer algorithm for OSC cameras. 

I recently rekindled my interest in spectroscopy and only having a OSC is detrimental to results. Having a free programme to equalise the pixels into a mono, binned super pixel is cheaper and as effective as mono. Well at least this is what I am hoping for.

[happy-kat]

I use it for platesolving mainly tied into sharpcap

edit: I also used it to try stacking a comet, liked how it scored my images very different approach

Edited April 22, 2023 by happy-kat

[Paul M]

It is the Swiss Army knife of imaging tools.

Just about the only thing it doesn't do is acquisition. 

As well as platesolving and stacking it has some basic processing tools. It maybe isn't intended to replace the full blooded processing applications but will make a serviceable image from good data. I find it's background equalisation routine works better than that in Siril (in my hands).

It has various image analysis tools such as tilt and linearity. Photometry is rather good too!

I often use it for live stacking. Also great for annotating asteroids and comets. 

I wouldn't be without ASTAP.

[happy-kat]

It's just had a big update recently including the star datadase

[bomberbaz]

Just had a look through the documentation page and cannot find an algorithm for removing the RGB bayer pattern from OSC camera FITS.

I thought it could bin the pixels and remove them. 

I don't suppose anyone else can help me here? @ONIKKINEN @happy-kat @Paul M ?

[ONIKKINEN]

Convert to Mono in the tools? Not sure if this deals with your bayer matrix being visible but worth a try.

[WolfieGlos]

I don't use ASTAP anywhere near to it's potential, but I really like how fast and smoothly it runs.

It was recommended to me for checking tilt but I also use it for plate solving (through NINA). I have also used it to create my one and only mosaic to date, a 2x1 of North America/Pelican Nebulae, using 2 stacks from Siril. Took a bit of trial and error but it worked and did it very quickly.

[bomberbaz]

11 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Convert to Mono in the tools? Not sure if this deals with your bayer matrix being visible but worth a try.

Never actually looked at that interface and was looking at the file checking/stacking part of the interface, doh!

 

 

[bottletopburly]

 Have a look at @han59 reply in this reply regarding converting to mono in Astap may be of help 

 

[bomberbaz]

2 hours ago, bottletopburly said:

 Have a look at @han59 reply in this reply regarding converting to mono in Astap may be of help 

 

Thanks for that, I had already played around in that area but even trying playing around with the above, I cannot figure a way to create a B&W fits, still getting colour. Probably doing something very basic wrong!