Wanting to get more serious about imaging

[RosalinaandLuma]

So, I have an 8'SCT and a ZWO 120, while I can get the basic images fine, im missing the next step - using flats/darks/etc and software. My main issue is my PC is Linux only (work reasons), I''ve tried to get PIPP working in Wine but no joy.

Looked into other software like Siril(?) but I start reading and end up more confused, Registax doesn't seem to get recent updates?

Basically looking for a gentle intro, but that allows me to grow and in Linux :)

[ONIKKINEN]

I am assuming you are doing planetary/lunar imaging with video recordings with your kit?

If so, take a look at autostakkert!3: https://www.autostakkert.com/wp/download/

It claims to work with Linux using wine, but have not personally tested this. If you can get it to work, look no further as AS!3 is much better than the aged Registax that is honestly a relic of the past these days.

If you were doing longer exposure deep sky imaging, then Siril is the way to go for stacking and image processing for free with linux.

[Dan_Paris]

For deep-sky Siril works really well and is simple to use as soon as you understand its logic. Preprocessing  and stacking is much faster than with Pixinsight, with nearly identical results. It is my go-to choice for years.

For planetary imaging, PlanetarySystemStacker  is native Linux:

https://github.com/Rolf-Hempel/PlanetarySystemStacker

 

 

Edited June 2, 2023 by Dan_Paris

[RosalinaandLuma]

Thanks,
Don't I need PIPP to correctly align for AS!3 to get to work ?

Ya current project is 20 stills of the moon to stack, that are all a little shifted around - tried it on PIPP on my windows laptop but it just woulnt work (not a fast machine), and then video of Jup/Saturn/Moon/Mars

[Cosmic Geoff]

13 minutes ago, RosalinaandLuma said:

Don't I need PIPP to correctly align for AS!3 to get to work ?

You can use PIPP to  centre the video frames, and also crop the frame size and reduce the file size, but it is not an essential step.   If you need to buy a Windows machine to handle your astro capture and/or processing, it need not cost much compared with the cost of an 8" SCT and camera,  if you choose one of the many used refurbished business machines available on Ebay.

I've always used Windows so that I don't have to worry about whether a given piece of software is going to run or not.

AS!3 needs to be used in conjunction with Registax 6.   A newer alternative which does everything is Astrosurface.

[Elp]

You can use autostakkert without registax, I've never used the latter for my planetary, images were finished in GIMP or PS. For planetary you also don't really need calibration files (darks, flats etc), they're more for deep sky. They're generally easy to capture (flats may cause issues depending on your setup), I also use Siril, it's a fantastic program, and layed out so you go through the process logically (I've got it down to around a 10 stage process complete in a few minutes, I don't use scripts, all manual).