AstroStacker

This application is used for pre-processing astronomical images. For now, here's what's working and what will be added:

Working

• Average stacking of image sets
• Calibrating lights with darks and bias frames
• Star alignment using triangle similarity
• Setting threshold of star detection

To-Do

• ECC and center-of-gravity alignment (first one is good for solar/lunar surfaces, second one is good for planetary images)
• Reading 8/16/32-bit FITS images and RAW DSLR images
• Writing to various formats, like FITS, TIFF
• More stacking methods (median, average, maximum, minimum)
• Pixel rejection algorithms for stacking
• Reduce size of needed libraries

Installation

1. Clone this git repository: git clone -b master --single-branch https://github.com/hamstersztyk/AstroStacker.git
2. Install packages with PIP:

• pip install PyQt5
• pip install numpy
• pip install opencv-python
• pip install scikit-image
• pip install imutils
• pip install astropy
• Note: you might want to install these dependencies with --user option.
• Note: don't install PyQt5 if you have Qt already installed. If you're using Arch Linux or its derivative, install OpenCV this way:
  • pacman -S opencv opencv-samples hdf5

How to use

1. Launch the application with python gui.py
2. Load needed frames (you need to provide light frames, dark, flat and bias frames are optional)
3. Test number of detected stars (more stars = slower, but more precise alignment)
4. Click "Stack" button to process the images
5. Final image will be saved in directory with light frames

Testing with example images

I provided a small set of my own images for testing while developing in images branch. You can download them using git clone -b images --single-branch https://github.com/hamstersztyk/AstroStacker.git