AutoStakkert!

AutoStakkert! is a free (for non-commercial use) Windows application designed to help you process astronomical recordings with the lucky imaging technique. It works with video recordings and image sequences captured with planetary cameras, including AVI, SER and FITS files, and is widely used for the Moon, the Sun and the planets. With AutoStakkert! you can quickly and easily stack the best frames of a recording to produce a single, high-quality image that reveals details that are hidden in the individual frames. The program is developed by Emil Kraaikamp, and the current generation is AutoStakkert!4.

Features:

• Image stabilization: AutoStakkert! stabilizes the recording using surface or planet (center of gravity) alignment, which compensates for drift and atmospheric motion between frames.

AutoStakkert! allows for easy and efficient alignment and stacking of astrophotos for maximum image quality.

- Quality-based stacking: AutoStakkert! estimates the quality of every frame and stacks only the best frames, set as a number of frames or as a percentage of the recording.

• Alignment points: the image is divided into many alignment points, placed automatically as a grid or drawn manually, so each part of the image is aligned separately for a sharper result.

• Colour support: AutoStakkert! can auto-detect colour, process grayscale and RGB data, debayer raw colour recordings with RGGB, GRBG, GBRG or BGGR patterns, and align RGB channels.

• Image calibration: AutoStakkert! can create and apply master dark and flat frames to correct for sensor defects, dust shadows and vignetting.

• Drizzle and resampling: optional 1.5x or 3.0x drizzle and resampling can increase the resolution of well-sampled recordings.

• Image export: AutoStakkert! saves the stacked images as TIF, PNG or FIT files and can also save an additional sharpened version.

• Frame view: a separate Frame View window shows individual frames and the alignment points, and can export selected frames.

• Automation: AutoStakkert! can batch-process all recordings of a session with the same settings, which saves a lot of manual work.

• Performance: multi-threaded processing and adaptive memory buffering make stacking of large recordings fast.

• Platform support: AutoStakkert! is a Windows program (current versions are 64-bit); there are no native Mac or Linux versions, although it can run there through Wine.