Software review

[MartinB]

What software are you using and is it any good? Just jot a couple of lines on each product. Here's mine for DSO work

Maxim DL v5 - does just about everything - controls mount, camera, focuser (with focusmax), guides (brilliantly), plate solves, aligns, combines and has a good digital development processing routine. Expensive. Don't use many of the processing routines.

FocusMax - Works with Maxim. FREE! Some good documentation but is takes a bit of thinking through. Once you have it working you never want to focus any other way! Also does automated temperature compensation on the fly.

Sky6 Pro - Takes a bit of getting used to and I only use a tiny fraction of the features but main software for controlling mount. Makes slewing back and forth a doddle. Fantastic FOV indicators which can incorporate scopes detectors and even off axis guiders. Expensive and free alternatives probably nearly as good.

CCDInspector - the included FWHM montor gives feed back on each sub and presents data in graphical form - great for seeing at a glance if you are loosing focus. You can use if for collimation and it gives great info about field flatness - a useful aid for getting flattener spacing right. good guide for sorting out which subs to keep and subs to junk. Great plug in for CCD stack

CCDStack - Gives great control over whole stacking process. Very good for those who don't trust automated routines. If you have CCDInspector as well it aligns very well including rotated and different scale images. Very good deconvolution and ddp routines. Problem for CCD stack is that Maxim seems to do most things just as well.

ImagesPlus - my old version is good for Canon capture (have never used). Powerful alignment routines but requires manual star selection. The processing tools are very powerful and supported by 5 CDs of video. Rarely use now I've got to grips with photoshop.

Photopshop CS2 - The more you use photoshop the better is seems to get. The layers and mask functions allow you to do so much. Loads of PS astro routines on the net. Humungusly expensive.

Gradient exterminator - PS plug in. Great tool for removing gradient. You need a decent amount of background sky for it to work.

NeatImage - very good noise reduction which gives a lot of control. Beyond anything the PS tools offer. Stand alone and PS plug in. You still can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear though!

Lots of people are tempting me now with PixInsight and I might succumb. Would like to know if Registar can do stuff that Maxim and CCDStack can't.

Would like to hear other peoples feedback on the software they use

[martin_h]

Nebulosity 2 - For image capture, does everything I need it to do, easy to use(bonus!) Also stacks and processes if needed.

[daz]

MaximDL 5 - Aquisition, calibration, aligning, combining, guiding, plate solving. As Martin says, I don't use too many of the processing tools, just started to play with DDP. I guide with pulse guide, so Maxim connects to the mount, filter wheel and camera's with no trouble and does everything I ask it!

RC Console Plug In for Maxim - plug in for more control over stacking with Maxim

CCD Commander - Used for imaging orchestration. It will control Maxim for aquisition, filter changes, plate solving following slew, guiding and TheSky6 for target aquisition. Will also do domes, instrument rotators, weather monitors. Works by a series of "actions" that you build a script with. Robust, reliable and well supported

Photoshop CS - Weapon of choice for processing, altough learning is a steep curve!

PictureCode Plug In - Noise filter plug in. Works really well, plenty of control over the settings and options

TheSky6 - Planetarium used for target list building. Excellent FOV indicators and you can also run queries against data sets. Uses a special ASCOM driver for use with EQMOD but works perfectly for this. Now superceded by TheSkyX.

EQMOD - Mount control, mount alignment. Excellent bit of (free) software that should be supported more by Skywatcher!!

FocusMax - Not got it to work yet, so still use FocusPal

Stellarium - Excellent free planetarium - ideal for showing people how the sky will look at their location/date/time. Easy to use and learn, lots of good features. Can be used for scope control as well.

[James]

Nebulosity 2 - for image capture, works natively on my Mac, allows stacking and a degree of processing, works well with my Imaging Source camera and Starlight Xpress H9 and my SX Filterwheel (and lots of other cameras including Atik, various DSLR's etc). There's a lot more to Nebulosity that I haven't tried yet such as scripting... the author, Craig Stark, is also pretty responsive to feature requests etc

PHD - as above, works well with my DMK31, Lodestar, SX Exview, simple to use and needs very little fiddling to work with a range of setups… autoguiding truly made easy.

Pixinsight - what can I say, it does so much more than I suspect I'll ever have the time to learn. It's a tad different from 'standard' Mac and Windows apps and takes a little getting used to. It's also available for the Mac… but the learning curve is extremely steep. Has a pragmatic licensing model - it can be installed on any and all machines you own (so long as you're the one using it...).

Voyager (from Carina Software) - I use this app to control my EQ6. Off all those I tried (Starry Night, The Sky, Stellarium and others) this connected without any hiccups and runs a treat. You can also use it with Carina's SkyFi wireless controller - with a long USB extension cable and active repeater and the SkyFi I can sit next to the telly with my laptop and do everything from inside the house, well, except focus the scope - that's the next thing to sort.

Also sometimes or previously used are:

The SkyX Serious Astronomer Edition - powerful, works well on my Mac and has extra's (chargeable) that I may eventually use (T-Point pointing analysis for example). Has given me more problems with connecting to my mount than Voyager above and given that much of what they do is the same has been largely superseded by Voyager.

Starry Night (v5) - nice app, fairly simple but I've never managed to get this to control my EQ6 so gave up in favour of Voyager & TheSky.

Equinox - Mac only and fairly simple (in the sense that it doesn't have all the shiny pictures that other apps have but is less processor intensive and for Mac users with SBIG camera you can pretty much do it all (except processing) from this app. There are other apps that can be integrated in but I haven't tried this yet.

Astroplanner (v2 Beta version)- used this for some time. Version 2 currently in beta is a big step up. I used to use this intensively for lists but tend to use it slightly less now in the field and more for playing with at other times to work out what'll be around at other times of the year. Loads of useable catalogues and a field of view screen that can be invaluable in working out what the extra faint fuzzes are in my images.

James

[melsky]

For Imaging

Photoshop CS3 and nothing but photoshop, I image with a DSLR so no software required.

Stellarium on the PC and Starmap Pro on the ipod to help find things.

Mel

[Steve]

Very useful thread, thank-you

[NeutrinoWave]

Great Knowledge Share SGL