ClarkVision.com

Software for Astrophotographers

by Roger N. Clark

This page has software for astrophotographers. My code is free, and I give the source code. I'll also indicate other code I use, but I have no affiliation with any commercial astrophotography software.

The Night Photography Series:

001) ETHICS in Night Photography
002) Beginning Astrophotography: Star Trails to Nightscape Photography
003) Astrophotography Made Simple
003) Astrophotography Made Simple
1a) Nightscape Photography with Digital Cameras
1b) Planning Nightscape Photography
1c) Characteristics of Best Digital Cameras and Lenses for Nightscape and Astro Photography
1d) Recommended Digital Cameras and Lenses for Nightscape and Astro Photography
1e) Nightscape Photography In The Field Setup
1f) A Very Portable Astrophotography, Landscape and Wildlife Photography Setup
1g) Tracking Mounts for Deep-Sky Astrophotography
2a1) Blue Lions on the Serengeti and Natural Colors of the Night Sky
2a2) The Color of the Night Sky
2b) The Color of Stars
2c) The Color of Nebulae and Interstellar Dust in the Night Sky
2d0) Sensor Calibration and Color
2d1) Verifying Natural Color in Night Sky Images and Understanding Good Versus Bad Post Processing
2d2) Color Astrophotography and Critics
2e) Verifying Natural Color Astrophotography Image Processing Work Flow with Light Pollution
2f) True Color of the Trapezium in M42, The Great Nebula in Orion
2g) The True Color of the Pleiades Nebulosity
3a1) Nightscape and Astrophotography Image Processing Basic Work Flow
3a2) Night Photography Image Processing, Best Settings and Tips
3a3) Astrophotography Post Processing with RawTherapee
3b) Astrophotography Image Processing
3c) Astrophotography Image Processing with Light Pollution
3d) Image Processing: Zeros are Valid Image Data
3e1) Image Processing: Stacking Methods Compared
3e2) Image Processing: Stacking with Master Dark vs no Dark Frames
3e2) Image Processing: Stacking with Master Dark vs no Dark Frames
3e2) Image Processing: Stacking with Master Dark vs no Dark Frames
3f1) Advanced Image Stretching with the rnc-color-stretch Algorithm
3f2) Messier 8 and 20 Image Stretching with the rnc-color-stretch Algorithm
3f3) Messier 22 + Interstellar Dust Image Stretching with the rnc-color-stretch Algorithm
3f4) Advanced Image Stretching with High Light Pollution and Gradients with the rnc-color-stretch Algorithm
3f5) Black Point Selection in Astrophotos: Impacts on faint nebulae colors and solutions with rnc-color-stretch
4a) Astrophotography and Focal Length
4b1) Astrophotography and Exposure
4b2) Exposure Time, f/ratio, Aperture Area, Sensor Size, Quantum Efficiency: What Controls Light Collection? Plus Calibrating Your Camera
4c) Aurora Photography
4d) Meteor Photography
4e) Do You Need a Modified Camera For Astrophotography?
4f) How to Photograph the Sun: Sunrise, Sunset, Eclipses
5) Nightscape Photography with a Barn Door Tracking Mount
6a) Lighting and Protecting Your Night Vision
6b) Color Vision at Night
7a) Night and Low Light Photography with Digital Cameras (Technical)
7b) On-Sensor Dark Current Suppression Technology
7c) Technology advancements for low light long exposure imaging
8a) Software for nightscape and astrophotographers (YOU ARE HERE)

Contents Copyright and License
Introduction
Davinci
Advanced Image Stretching with rnc-color-stretch
Davinci sigma clipped average

All images, text and data on this site are copyrighted.
They may not be used except by written permission from Roger N. Clark.
All rights reserved.

If you find the information and software on this site useful, please support Clarkvision and make a donation (link below).

Recommended Cameras and My Gear List for Photography

Figure 1. An example nightscape image in natural color. The southern Milky Way rises over the Serengeti. See the Gallery Image for more information about this image.

Introduction

Here is my current astrophotography workflow (2016)

Raw data conversion in Photoshop ACR. See Part 3c for raw converter settings.
Alignment. I usually use Deep Sky Stacker, DSS (free software). Sometimes I turn on the 2x drizzle which improves stacked resolution but file sizes grow by 4 times. I do NOT use the final stacked image from DSS. DSS does some strange calibration on the staked image, making it very difficult to make nice color images with decent contrast. I have DSS write out the aligned files of each image to be stacked. In DSS, settings, under the alignment tab, check the box:
create a registered/calibrated file for each light frame.
Sometimes DSS does not align well. Then I'll use ImagesPlus (commercial software).
Stacking with sigma-clipped average. ImagesPlus does this. Or use my Davinci code (below).
Stretch, including subtract light pollution. Follow my guide in Part 3c. Any image editor witha curves tool and 16-bits/channel support. (I have a new Davinci program in development that will do most of this automatically and provide much improved colors. Watch this space for an announcement hopefully by November.)
Star size reduce (ImagesPlus)
Richardson-Lucy Deconvolution (ImagesPlus has the best implementation of Richardson-Lucy Deconvolution that I have seen).
Final image sizes and color space for web or print in Photoshop.

Copyright and License

Programs written by Roger N. Clark fall under the following license:

GNU General Public License https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of the program must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Neither Roger N. Clark, clarkvision.com nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Davinci

Davinci is an open source data manipulation program available from Arizona State U. http://davinci.asu.edu/ It runs on unix, linux, windows.

Advanced Image Stretching with rnc-color-stretch

The rnc-color-stretch program provides advanced image stretching of astrophotography images and is able to extract faint signals from astrophotos while maintaining original color. The program enables novice to expert image processors with a consistent environment that fits well into a color managed workflow to produce spectacular natural color images as well as custom white balance or narrow band or UV-IR false color images. The rnc-color-stretch program is an open source davinci script and free.

Download and installation instructions for Linux, Macs and Windows is here.

Davinci sigma clipped average

davinci.sigma-clip-average-3pass: takes a set of images and computes the average, rejecting outliers. Source code is here.

Save the script to a file named davinci.sigma-clip-average-3pass put in /usr/local/bin (linux), macs?, windows?
Run the script from a command line and it will tell you the input needed.
Usage notes are here.

If you find the information and software on this site useful, please support Clarkvision and make a donation (link below).

Recommended Cameras and My Gear List for Photography

The Night Photography Series:

001) ETHICS in Night Photography
002) Beginning Astrophotography: Star Trails to Nightscape Photography
003) Astrophotography Made Simple
1a) Nightscape Photography with Digital Cameras
1b) Planning Nightscape Photography
1c) Characteristics of Best Digital Cameras and Lenses for Nightscape and Astro Photography
1d) Recommended Digital Cameras and Lenses for Nightscape and Astro Photography
1e) Nightscape Photography In The Field Setup
1f) A Very Portable Astrophotography, Landscape and Wildlife Photography Setup
1g) Tracking Mounts for Deep-Sky Astrophotography
2a1) Blue Lions on the Serengeti and Natural Colors of the Night Sky
2a2) The Color of the Night Sky
2b) The Color of Stars
2c) The Color of Nebulae and Interstellar Dust in the Night Sky
2d0) Sensor Calibration and Color
2d1) Verifying Natural Color in Night Sky Images and Understanding Good Versus Bad Post Processing
2d2) Color Astrophotography and Critics
2e) Verifying Natural Color Astrophotography Image Processing Work Flow with Light Pollution
2f) True Color of the Trapezium in M42, The Great Nebula in Orion
2g) The True Color of the Pleiades Nebulosity
3a1) Nightscape and Astrophotography Image Processing Basic Work Flow
3a2) Night Photography Image Processing, Best Settings and Tips
3a3) Astrophotography Post Processing with RawTherapee
3b) Astrophotography Image Processing
3c) Astrophotography Image Processing with Light Pollution
3d) Image Processing: Zeros are Valid Image Data
3e1) Image Processing: Stacking Methods Compared
3e2) Image Processing: Stacking with Master Dark vs no Dark Frames
3f1) Advanced Image Stretching with the rnc-color-stretch Algorithm
3f2) Messier 8 and 20 Image Stretching with the rnc-color-stretch Algorithm
3f3) Messier 22 + Interstellar Dust Image Stretching with the rnc-color-stretch Algorithm
3f4) Advanced Image Stretching with High Light Pollution and Gradients with the rnc-color-stretch Algorithm
3f5) Black Point Selection in Astrophotos: Impacts on faint nebulae colors and solutions with rnc-color-stretch
4a) Astrophotography and Focal Length
4b1) Astrophotography and Exposure
4b2) Exposure Time, f/ratio, Aperture Area, Sensor Size, Quantum Efficiency: What Controls Light Collection? Plus Calibrating Your Camera
4c) Aurora Photography
4d) Meteor Photography
4e) Do You Need a Modified Camera For Astrophotography?
4f) How to Photograph the Sun: Sunrise, Sunset, Eclipses
5) Nightscape Photography with a Barn Door Tracking Mount
6a) Lighting and Protecting Your Night Vision
6b) Color Vision at Night
7a) Night and Low Light Photography with Digital Cameras (Technical)
7b) On-Sensor Dark Current Suppression Technology
7c) Technology advancements for low light long exposure imaging
8a) Software for nightscape and astrophotographers (YOU ARE HERE)

Home Galleries Articles Reviews Best Gear Science New About Contact

http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/night-photography-in-the-field-setup

First Published September 28, 2016
Last updated November 30, 2016