Astrometric Stacking Program [ASTAP] - Free and great! - Forums

Topic starter

Mar 20, 2021 · Edited: Mar 20, 2021

ASTAP - Astrometric Stacking Program

I recently used ASTAP to stack fits file and the software is great!
I compared ASTAP stacks and processing results and found the stack to be very good.
If you are using StarTools, the ASTAP works very well...

ASTAP is a free software and in my opinion provides very good clean data. For a StarTools user, ASTAP, may be a better stacking software to use a stack that is 'close' to the photons.

The link to ASTAP is: AS

Compare these 2 images, first image is ASTAP stack and the second one is DSS.

DSS is fine, however, for StarTools, ASTAP may provide a stack that is simple to process in StarTools.

This M78 image is work in progress as I need to get more data, ASTAP for me using

Wei-Hao Wang

Mar 20, 2021

Thank you for sharing.

I have some questions for ASTAP users: can it plate-solve and then sync the resulting coordinates to the mount via ASCOM? Can it get the coordinates from the mount via ASCOM before it does plate-solving so a blind solving would not be necessary? Here I mean just doing these by ASTAP itself, without relying on any other programs (except for ASCOM of course).

Well Written Engaging

Min Xie

Mar 20, 2021

Wei-Hao,

I think ASTAP now is getting very popular as the plate solving component for automated acquisition systems like NINA, SGP… I've used ATSAP instead of PS2 for a while already.

-Min

Wei-Hao Wang

Mar 20, 2021

Hi Min,

Thanks.

I don't use any of the astro-app for acquisition, as they cannot control my camera. What I need is a direct communication between ASTAP (or any reasonably good plate solver) and ASCOM, without things like NINA, SGP, etc sitting in the middle. I would like to know if anyone has tried something like this, or just know whether it should work.

Dave B

Mar 20, 2021 · Edited: Mar 20, 2021

Best easiest Soloution is to ask Hans he posts on most forums and replies via email too swiftly.
https://sourceforge.net/p/astap-program/discussion/

Wei-Hao Wang:
Hi Min,

Thanks.

I don't use any of the astro-app for acquisition, as they cannot control my camera. What I need is a direct communication between ASTAP (or any reasonably good plate solver) and ASCOM, without things like NINA, SGP, etc sitting in the middle. I would like to know if anyone has tried something like this, or just know whether it should work.

Paolo

Mar 20, 2021

Been using ASTAP for quite some time now. It's blazing fast to solve images, even on a raspberry pi!

For stacking mosaics and/or multiple nights with not so good data (e.g. frames manually aligned across multiple nights if using a skyguider pro), I found out that APP is unbeatable though.

Helpful Concise

Wei-Hao Wang

Mar 20, 2021

Just installed it and took a look inside. It seems its main purpose is to stack images. For plate-solving, it's not a standalone tool to communicate with ASCOM. It has to be part of other imaging programs.