Software for lunar and platetary photography

[starscy]

What is a good software for lunar and platetary photography with a webcam?

[Cornelius Varley]

Craterlet, K3ccdtools, Wxastrocapture.

Peter

[yesyes]

and then registax

[arad85]

I found QCfocus to be the lowest CPU user, if that's important to you (it was with me to avoid dropping too many frames).

[jgs001]

There's another benefit of QCFocus over WxAstroCapture if you're using an SPC900... QCFocus supports the YUY2 (I think) codec, which is a newer, and supposedly better quality codec, and has a focus assist tool. The other software is WcCtrl, which runs alongside and provides for control of the camera settings, which 8 slots for saving presets too.

[arad85]

Yes, that too

[michaelmorris]

K3CCDTools is a great capture utility

K3's Astronomy Home Page

Useful capture features includes:

- screen zoom (helps focussing),

- FWHM focus assistance,

- programmed captures (for time lapse),

- reticle,

- brightness meter (very helpful in setting exposure),

- planetary imaging auto-guiding (I've never tried using it, but I gather the facility is there),

- support for a very wide selection of webcams, including super webcams (Imaging source, Lumenera etc),

- support for long exposure-modified webcams.

The most current version (version 3) is low priced (around $40 I believe). There is an older, less capable version (version 1) that can be downloaded for free.

[jgs001]

Personally I found that the k3ccdtools controls for the SPC900 were too difficult to use, as it uses the vLounge software, rather than it's own control settings. It has no values by the sliders so it's a bit hit and miss when you click on the slider... Apart from that, I'm sure the software is excellent though.

QCFocus, WxAstroCapture and WcCtrl have a scale above the slider so you can at least quickly see what direction you've moved the control in, and the cost is excellent (free). I believe that both QCFocus and WxAstroCapture provide for LX captures also.

[michaelmorris]

Personally I found that the k3ccdtools controls for the SPC900 were too difficult to use, as it uses the vLounge software, rather than it's own control settings. It has no values by the sliders so it's a bit hit and miss when you click on the slider... Apart from that, I'm sure the software is excellent though.

I use WcCtrl with K3CCDTools so that I don't have to use the VLounge software.

[jgs001]

.... Of course... I started using wxastrocapture and qcfocus before I found wcctrl... so never thought to try k3ccdtools again..

[michaelmorris]

Astrosnap pro 2.1 is also quite good.

http://www.astrosnap.com/

Again it's low cost (35 Euros) rather than free, but it does have two nifty features.

1 - Frame Intergration. Basically on-the-fly stacking, in the same way that one stacks deep sky objects (addition) rather than the planetary objects (average). This allows you to use a webcam as a crude intergrating video camera, such as a Mintron or Watec camera.

2- Autofocus. When used in conjunction with an electronic focusser, it sometimes does a pretty reasonable job of autofocussing either using FWHM (stars) or contrast (lunar)