18-01-2016, 05:26 PM
(This post was last modified: 18-01-2016, 05:37 PM by Andrew Cool.)
What is SkippyStak?
SkippyStak is, hopefully, a simple and easy to use program for aligning and stacking astronomical images.
It's also Free. Gratis. Libre even.
It is written in Interactive Data Language (IDL), the language of professional astronomers and medical imaging,
and is a 64bit program -> no 3.2GB limitations of 32bit software or dependence on external libraries!
IDL is available from http://exelisvis.com/
SkippyStak is a no frills approach to aligning and stacking astro photos. It uses routines from NASA's IDL Astronomy Library
to detect the stars in each frame , and to align them accordingly.
Internally, the program handles data as 32bit floating point (real) values, so an RGB image has 3x32bit arrays or 96 bits equivalent.
SkippyStak understands raw files (Canon CR2, Nikon NEF, etc), courtesy of Dave Coffin's dcraw program, but must first save the raw files out in TIFF format, which it can then digest. So you end up with TIFf files in your image folder - make sure you've got sufficient disk space!
SkippyStak also understands FITS files, using NASA IDL routines, and can read and write FITS.
And, following from the process of reading raw files, SkippyStak can also read and write TIFF files.
By default, the final stacked image is Auto-Saved to a JPEG file, and a 16bit integer TIFF file. Optionally, the user may
select 32bit integer TIFF, 32 floating point TIFF or 16 bit integer or or 32 bit floating point FITS as the output format.
When processing 36 megapixel Nikon D800 images, the SkippyStak process uses about 10GB of RAM. With Canon 5D MKIII images, about 5.5GB of RAM.
SkippyStak will handle RGB or Monochrome images.
Although SkippyStak is not specifically multi-threaded, IDL will make use of multiple threads and cores.
SkippyStak does not play with the colour in your images. To pull out those glorious nebula, you'll need to use on of the traditional image editing programs such as PhotoShop, Pix Insight or the magnificent StarTools!
Download SkippyStak at http://www.skippystak.com.au/download
Lastly, why the name SkippyStak? Simple, it's a sibling software to my SkippySky Astronomy Weather Conditions site
http://www.skippysky.com.au
Regards,
Andrew Cool MASA
Adelaide, South Australia
PS : Still looking for all the frills and options considered necessary to align and stack images? Then you need to head over to some other website and hand over your hundreds of dollars.
If, on the other hand, you find that SkippyStak is just the Beez Kneez and does what you need, then a small PayPal donation via my SkippySky website would be welcome.