Moving my astro work to OSX

I have been using Deepsky Stacker, BackyardEOS, and BackyardRED in a vitural machine on my MacBook. But, I think it is time to move past that due to the limiting of computing resources this results in. The limited resources annoy me, so I don't do much astro work.

Can anyone make any suggestions as to what software packages I should look at? I just have an AstroTrac, so I really don't need auto guiding. I don't do enough astro to make auto guiding a priority at this point, but it might be a capability that I would like in the future.

Thanks.

Personally I can't help you but the only one i know of is a member called Nighthound . He spends most his time in the bird section but if you contact him perhaps he can help you. He use to be into astrophotography big time but has slacked off since he got his 500mm Canon lens for birding .

Celestron wrote in post #18003954
Personally I can't help you but the only one i know of is a member called Nighthound . He spends most his time in the bird section but if you contact him perhaps he can help you. He use to be into astrophotography big time but has slacked off since he got his 500mm Canon lens for birding .

Thank you. I have sent him a PM.

I think if I had a 500mm I'd be pretty focussed on birding too . . . especially at this time of year.

If you hear back, please post the suggestions. I'd love to know which software for OSX

Thanks!

neacail wrote in post #18003867
I have been using Deepsky Stacker, BackyardEOS, and BackyardRED in a vitural machine on my MacBook. But, I think it is time to move past that due to the limiting of computing resources this results in. The limited resources annoy me, so I don't do much astro work.

Can anyone make any suggestions as to what software packages I should look at? I just have an AstroTrac, so I really don't need auto guiding. I don't do enough astro to make auto guiding a priority at this point, but it might be a capability that I would like in the future.

Thanks.

Shelley, the development of astro processing software for Macintosh over the past 5-8 years has been disappointing. I had expectations that most if not all of the existing preferred or popular software would expand from Windows-based to Mac as well, that just hasn't happened. Obviously the developers don't feel there was a large enough market to justify the expense. The preferred software for me in the past was Images Plus. At that time I had a Macbook Pro set up with Boot Camp so I could run Windows and stack my astro work using Images Plus, export them and finish processing in Photoshop. I no longer have that old Macbook set up with Bootcamp so I've recently started using Nebulosity on my newer Macbook Pro. I've actually only used it once so I need to watch more tutorials before giving an in-depth and fair evaluation. It costs a fraction of what Images Plus does so it's not an apples to apples comparison.

http://www.stark-labs.com/nebulosity.ht​ml

I have no experience with DeepSky Stacker so I don't know how well it'll measure up with Nebulosity as far as functionality and quality. For me the most important part of processing astro happens in Photoshop, and of course the most important part of the entire process is collecting quality data, ya can't make chicken soup from chicken poop. Stretching your stacked image in Photoshop requires a light hand and constant monitoring of the histogram. I also recommend Noel's Astro Tools(Plug-ins) for Photoshop, however I'm not certain how useful they would be for wide field work. I shoot using telescopes and find them very helpful. You might want to read up on Nebulosity and watch some videos to get started and determine if it would be a good option for you. Good luck and don't be afraid to ask more questions along the way, plenty of people here that can help out.

As to reason for doing less astro, it wasn't completely due to the acquisition of the 500L. I've always done astro and wildlife, but several years back my dark sky friend moved away and I lost to desire to stand out in a field all night long by myself. I've done it before but it's always more fun when you have someone to hang with. It's also about an hour drive to darker skies so it involves a lot of packing/unpacking/sett​ing up/ packing and the unpacking at home, about 250+ pounds of gear. I'm determined to make this coming winter my return to the hobby with more frequency. I still have all the gear and it's in great shape. Light pollution isn't getting any better, may have to drive further.

Thank you, Steve.

I've downloaded Nebulosity v4.1 for my MacBook (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014), with OSX 10.11.4. It appears to have installed properly.

I have been able to connect my Canon 6D (Firmware 1.1.4), with a 14mm Rokinon installed (no focus confirmation chip), via a 15' USB cable, and Nebulosity is able to connect to the camera. For some reason I was getting an error "error setting the image properties for the capture." I flipped the 6D from M to B and it still didn't work. Then I turned off the 6D, closed out Nebulosity, reopened Nebulosity, turned on the 6D, set the 6D back to manual, and it worked. I don't know what the problem was.

So, it looks like I can use Nebulosity as a capture program, which is excellent. While not as sophisticated as BackyardEOS (after a cursory glance), I'm pretty sure I can do away with BackyardEOS. I'll have to read some tutorials to see all of the capture functionality, especially with regards to lights, flats, darks, and biases.

I only took a few shots in my kitchen, but it looks like it has bundled the photos it captured into one Nebulosity file. If I'm understanding what happened correctly, that's a really interesting feature. With using BackyardEOS for capture, I wind up with a whole pile of files with really crazy, long, filenames that clutter up my hard drive and are hard to organize and sift through.

I'll keep playing with it. Thank you for the suggestion!

neacail wrote in post #18004940
Thank you, Steve.

I've downloaded Nebulosity v4.1 for my MacBook (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014), with OSX 10.11.4. It appears to have installed properly.

I have been able to connect my Canon 6D (Firmware 1.1.4), with a 14mm Rokinon installed (no focus confirmation chip), via a 15' USB cable, and Nebulosity is able to connect to the camera. For some reason I was getting an error "error setting the image properties for the capture." I flipped the 6D from M to B and it still didn't work. Then I turned off the 6D, closed out Nebulosity, reopened Nebulosity, turned on the 6D, set the 6D back to manual, and it worked. I don't know what the problem was.

So, it looks like I can use Nebulosity as a capture program, which is excellent. While not as sophisticated as BackyardEOS (after a cursory glance), I'm pretty sure I can do away with BackyardEOS. I'll have to read some tutorials to see all of the capture functionality, especially with regards to lights, flats, darks, and biases.

I only took a few shots in my kitchen, but it looks like it has bundled the photos it captured into one Nebulosity file. If I'm understanding what happened correctly, that's a really interesting feature. With using BackyardEOS for capture, I wind up with a whole pile of files with really crazy, long, filenames that clutter up my hard drive and are hard to organize and sift through.

I'll keep playing with it. Thank you for the suggestion!

You're very welcome, happy to hear you're finding Nebulosity helpful Shelley. If the tutorial leaves you with any questions don't hesitate to contact Craig Stark. He quickly responded to my question, it's always nice to have great customer support. Also, if you end up needing to auto guide somewhere down the road, PHD Guiding is great too. Have fun!

I use a Mac almost (but not quite) exclusively.

The only program that I miss (and I don't miss it that much) is BackyardEOS. For everything else there's something on the Mac.

For auto-guiding (I know you said you aren't doing auto-guiding), one of the most popular programs is PHD (now PHD2). But that's available on all platforms (the same software is available on PC, Mac... and possibly even Linux (not sure about Linux)).

Nebulosity will do image acquisition. Honestly sometimes I just use an intervalometer. Sometimes I use my iPad with a CamRanger (so I don't have to drag out my laptop). The only time use Nebulosity to do the capture is the clear advantage is if you plan to use PHD2 during image capture to perform "dithering" (very slightly shifting the position of the telescope between frames -- typically just a few pixels -- for the purpose of helping the computer eliminate pattern noise). This is because Nebulosity and PHD2 will "talk" to each other so that the guider won't perform the fractional shift (dithering) while the camera shutter is open and working on collecting an exposure. Nebulosity will tell PHD2 when it's safe to shift the scope and PHD2 will tell Nebulosity when it's done shifting and ready for the next capture. Apart from that advantage, it doesn't really matter what you use to control the camera for image capture.

Once the frames are all captured and you're ready to process... there's no Deep Sky Stacker... but you can process in Nebulosity OR (what I prefer) use PixInsight.

PixInsight is available on Mac, PC, and Linux. It's not free (but they have an awesome upgrade policy... "Buy" once and you get upgrades for life). But I should warn you... PixInsight isn't as easy as Deep Sky Stacker. It's a bit like thinking you might like to take flying lessons... and instead of starting with one of those trainer planes, you decide to start with the Boeing 747. It has thousands of switches and knobs (and you'll stare at them thinking "what they @#R$@# do I do now?").

There are tutorials (IP4AP.com website will let you buy training videos and there are numerous free tutorials either on websites or in YouTube videos).

I went the PixInight route and while it was rough getting through the learning curve (I don't think I'm "through" the learning curve but I'm beyond the basics), the payoff is tremendous. It's vastly more powerful than anything else I've seen.

Astrophotography requires:
1. Image acquisition
2. Image "calibration, registration & integration" (combine all your data)
3. Image processing (which splits into a somewhat mechanical part and an artistic part. For example you want to deal with background, noise, white balance, etc. But then there's a point where it gets more artistic than scientific.)

PixInisght will get you through all of part 2 and most of part 3. But there are some capabilities of part 3 (image processing & adjustments) which can be done in PixInsight... and some parts are better done in Photoshop. The significant difference is that most of what PixInsight does is performed on the "whole" image. You can create masks to isolate certain parts of the image but even the masks are mathematically generated... You don't get to use your mouse or stylus to "draw" a mask around an object like you can in Photoshop. This means that for many local adjustments, Photoshop wins.

But the advantage of PixInsight is that the whole thing was written specifically to do image processing for astrophotography. So it has a lot of killer features that Photoshop can't touch.

TCampbell wrote in post #18006314
But the advantage of PixInsight is that the whole thing was written specifically to do image processing for astrophotography. So it has a lot of killer features that Photoshop can't touch.

Hmm. PixInsight is a lot more costly than Nebulosity.

Maybe someone can answer this . . .

I use an Astronomik CLS Light Pollution Filter (https://www.optcorp.co​m …-eos-full-frame-clip.html in my 6D when shooting in, or close, to the city.

This filter does a number on white balance with my setup. It completely destroys it (IMO). It alters it to the point where I just can't fix it correctly in Photoshop. It might be the way I'm using it (I don't understand what their aperture ratios mean). 21mm Zeiss Distagon at 2.8.

Do either of the two programs (Nebulosity and PixInsight) have the ability to do really great white balance corrections? This is something that is reasonably easy for me to test. I can do it from my backyard in the city.