I am looking for stacking software that will take the total number of images to be stacked and average N successive frames instead of stacking all images that result in only one image. I am asking because I am doing photometry with Seestar. Since images are very short, I want to stack several to improve SNR. It isn’t too difficult to manually stack to end up with only 3 or 4 stacked images but if you have hundreds of images and you want to stack 6/image then the process can become tedious to stack them manually. I have looked at Deep Sky Stacker and Pixinsight but can’t see how I could do it in those programs. I also have posted messages on their forums to see if it can be done. I also looked at Siril. Does anyone know of any programs that will do what I want?
Hi Barbara,
Pierre de Ponthierre has such a program. I am not home and do not have it on my laptop. When back home on Sept. 21 maybe you can remind me about your request,
Josch
AstroImageJ can do binning on a determined number of images, or a temporal basis, at users choice.
This will be done after you have extracted the photometry of your target in all of the primary individual images.
MPO Canopus does a good stacking job. Also, it allows different stacking methods, such as stacking every other image, etc. A bit of a learning curve, but good support and it is fairly inexpensive.
Tycho Tracker does this very efficiently as well. I use the Seestar and can acquire 700-800 images and then stack them in say groups of 6. TT does this very quickly.
Go to PhotoRed, and then Utilities/Image Processing/Batch Process. Under Actions, choose Stack (Average or Sum, Multi). This will allow you to choose all images to be stacked, the number - every other, every third, etc., When the tool starts, it allows the user to specify which stars to use to align the images, name of the stacked images, output destination, etc.
As you've noted, the manual can miss explanations of specific actions. As you get into the actual use, you may need extra guidance. Dr. Warner and folks on the group list are very available to help folks walk through the actual use of the tools. Best regards.
I’ve used DeepSkyStacker (DSS) for all my CCD & DSLR flat-fielding, de-darking and stacking. There is an “optimal” configuration for all the options to get processed images suitable for photometry. It is not the same as for making pretty pictures.
I use another program to do the aperture photometry on the images produced by DSS.
Just another software option to consider. If you have questions I can provide the settings I use.
The download link is at the bottom for windows 64-bit only.
Thanks Jim,
I have downloaded DSS but can’t find a way to do what I want: load several images but instead of stacking all images to get 1 image, I want it to stack N number of images to get multiple stacked images. Do you know if it can do that? If so please let me know.
To make sure I understand your question… Say you take 100 V images and you want each group of 10 images stacked. 1 thru 10, 11 thru 20, … 91 thru 100. I could do it manually by appropriate checking and unchecking the light images and manually saving the resulting stack image.
Automatically in DSS there is no way that I know of to do a running bin average stack… there is a batch mode that might do it but I’ve never used that and it looks like you would have to create lists to load into the batch system.
I assumed it was the Pro edition. I agree: Tycho Tracker has a lot to offer for US$50.
If I understood you correctly, you do stacks of 5 or 6 images, calibrate them and in a lot with TT, then put all those individual lots together to construct your light curve? And you can do all this with a simple Seestar 50? Or do I have all of this wrong. Sounds amazing. A great tool to make Photometry accessible in Outreach.
This “Reproject” is really neat! It’s a fantastic tool that can be integrated in a course we our organizing at CopernicusClub on Photometry with Python next month.
The workflow I use in Tyco Tracker is to remove hot pixels, debayer (extract R, G and B channels), plate solve and align the images. I have been observing eclipsing binaries recently and can have up to 800 or images over a 3-4 hour run. Then after identifying the target and comparison stars and confirming aperture for photometry, you can then stack the 800 images however you want. In groups of 5, 6, 10, 50, 100, whatever you like. That’s a great feature as you can stack as many or as little images as you like to ensure that you have an acceptable SNR. Then photometry is performed on these stacked images and an AAVSO report can be outputted.
I have a detailed workflow of how to perform this stacking which I can send you offline.
The only thing I haven’t figure out is whether it’s possible to save the stacked images. TBH I can’t see I really need to.